WAPPINSHAW 2013

For this year's Wappinshaw show, Martin and I put on a table on behalf of the club. As club's fantasy wargames co-ordinator (power drips from every finger..), it was going to have to be Warhammer! DWC's last display at Wappinshaw, which was going to be a historical one, had fallen through due to the various commitments of the guys involved. Last time I'd worked on one of these it had been the clubs first display - warhammer again - in 2011, but I figured enough time had gone by for people to forget...

Bust some poses for the punters lads, we're going on show!

Kev and Dougie had been working on a Flames of War demo table for Carronade two weeks before and looking at their project I knew I would have to go about mine differently. The lads were making a big effort - club resources for flames are still pretty low - at working up a really nice looking scenario from scratch. They went for Arnhem, allowing them to draw on the good supply of painted Germans and Brits available from club members, but making almost all the scenery from scratch. Kev knew a guy who could etch MDF with a laser printer for 'kit' houses, which would save a lot of cash - but money was still required to build and put together the scenary. There was a club drive to buy a tank for a painting competition to build up some funds, but it was all a lot of work, and they started with 3 months to go. As time went on, little was happening, and Geoff was getting ancy - the club had fallen through on commitments at shows before and I could understand that he didn't want us getting a name for ourselves.

Annoyed at myself for this, but no photo of OUR table! Instead, this is the 40k monster which we were next to...

Kev and Dougie pulled it out and put a nice table on, but it was a mad rush to the line - and the organizers stuck us next to the biggest 40k table ever... For Wappinshaw, I knew I'd only be using what was already available at the club. There are a wide range of Warhammer players however, with lots of different armies, some of whom are quite handy with a brush. I put out a call for the guys to bring in their best painted stuff and I got a great response! Chris especially - one of the newer members at the club - revealed himself to be a blessing in disguise. It turns out he is very involved o the painting side, and is even entering the UK Golden Demon competition next year! He got on board massively and provided a beautifully painted elven army - the set from the island of blood box, which he painted in a week (!), and some stunning big set piece models. James Craddock provided the pick of his ogres, Kev put forward his Bretonnians and a lovely green knight, Angus pitched in with some Wood elves, whilst Robert helped out with his huge model collection to give us daemons of chaos, dark elves and Empire. Martin put in his Imperial War Altar - another GW huge model - and about 80% of the terrain. I used my own Vampire Counts to make up the bulk of the 'bad guys'.

The original plan was for the display to showcase the big multiplayer games we have at the club. We'd played this year's massive multiplayer warhammer game only two weeks before, and I used the photos form that to make up a promo poster for the day. The display was to be a snapshot of one of these big multi-race encounters, with loads of allied contingents clashing on a grand scale. Initially I was going to use Kev's battleboard and paint it up for him, but time and resources scotched that pretty quickly. I ended up just using a flat green felt mat, as it looked great under our terrain. Martin really came through on this with his massive collection. Apparently he makes terrain just to de-stress, and he's damn good at it. Lets hope that work really flogs him this year! He'd just bought an Elven watchtower set, fully painted, complete with elven ruins. When I saw this, I knew we had to have it! The scenario took shape - a fading, beleaguered Elven trading outpost in the Old World, a remnant of older times under attack by an evil horde hungry to loot its treasures. The Elves put out the call to aid to their allies and the stage was set. Here's how the 'Battle of Tol Ganeth' panned out:

The battle for Tol Ganeth. The big terrain pieces such as the elven structures and river were Martin's. I made the bridge (wooop!) and bought the ruined roundtower at the far end of the table at the Carronade flea-market.

The Elven army advances from behind the river. Tyrion straddles the bridge, taunting the foe! Nice shot of Martin's tower set. The models on the hill on the opposite bank are Kev's skirmishing Brets set to disrupt the enemy advance.

The battle was set on a diagonal axis across the table. Playing this battle out would have been a mess, but it let us pack in the sprawl of combatants flooding in to the battle.

Robert's Empire gunners prime their shot on the watchtower balcony.

Robert's daemonettes charge in

Chris' amazing thundertusk. The paintjob was fantastic. Chris said he made the base using layers of shredded cork board.

Chris' Elven dragon. His lovely wife helped us out with setup on the day. Dragons are her favourite!

Geoff strapped on the promo as soon as we'd set up. From this end you can see my Fimir mage (had to use him!) lurking in the low trees by the swamp on the left. Its a good shot too of Chris' Mortis Engine, supporting my Vampire Counts models in all its massive majesty. I hope mine looks this nice when its finally done... At the centre, Kev's green knight rides into an ambush in the ruined roundtower by dark elven shades.

Al's flickering tea lights shrouded in smoke look great on the tabletop. Here we used it to make a burning ruin. Across the wide scope of the battle, we tried to set up small vignettes of models or units interacting with each other or setting the scene to try and give a bit of extra depth and tell the 'story' of the battle.

It was an early start at the Kelvin Hall for this one! I'd never been in the sports arena end of the building, but I was pretty impressed with its size (I even snuck in to the indoor athletics arena for a go on the track when no one was about). Angus, Chris and his wife were there for the set up at 8, whilst Martin and Tam joined us a couple of hours later. It was a good turn out on the day from the club as I saw lots of members come along and join us. There was only one hall (although a big one) compared to Carronade with its 3 or 4 the fortnight before, so it was sizeable but certainly not on the same level.  Looking around the hall, I'm fairly confident that we had one of the best tables there on the day, and we got plenty of interest from the punters. We spoke to a number of interested folks too, so maybe we'll see a few more faces around the club in the next weeks as a result.

The day went really well - enough of the lads showed up for us to get a game of the Game of Thrones boardgame on a table we appropriated and stuck on the foot of our display table. That got some interested looks too! I didn't buy anything from the stalls at this one, but it wasn't for lack of quality - I reckon I'd spent enough at Carronade the fortnight before to do me for a while. I liked the Warlord Games stand across from us though - I'm very impressed with their Hail Caesar ancients. Geoff could get us the stuff cheaper at the club however, so I saved my pennies for now. My only frustration with the day was that my crappy phone battery gave out and I didn't get many pics. The main guy who does the Wappinshaw blog was running the table next to us and too busy to get many shots either, so there aren't even many others to goggle at on the web. Here are the photies I managed to get of other tables:

This was a LRPG equipment stall at the front door. This must weigh a ton to wear!

Nice village buildings (resin models I'm told) from the Napoleonic table next to ours, put on by the Phoenix club.

Phoenix club's Napoleonic Table. The guy running this was a nice bloke.

A vignette from the Napoleonic table.

More Napoleonic. This table was huge!

The battle for the People's Palace in A Very British Civil War. Interesting looking system this - I love the tanks and planes.

More from the LRPG stand.

Overall, this was a great day :-) Looking forward to next years - already talk of putting on a Necromunda table, which could cause a stir; I've not seen anything like that on the shows circuit this year so we would definitely stand out. Just need to get interest going again at the club...

STEEL GOBLIN!

Whoooooooaaaaaa its been a long time! Looking back, I've been busier than a cat trying to bury a turd on a frozen pond. Yet once again, just like last year, and the year before that - the work suddenly drops off and instead of diving with childish cries of joy into everything I'd been idly dreaming of doing during the past few months, I end floating about like a fart trapped in an elevator. Cant seem to get the gumption together to do anything other than drink tea and sleep intermittently on the couch. Well enough of that shit! Its time to get something done!

There's not been much time to put stuff up on the blog or the web over the last few months, but I've still managed to pack in lots of gaming. Last week at the club I played in a Warhammer doubles game, playtesting the format for the upcoming doubles tournament. Players were allowed 2000 pts a man, giving us 4000 pt armies to face off against each other. Part of the idea behind it is to produce unusual playing situations, so we plan to ignore the usual rules for allies. Consequently, my Vampire Counts alliance with Robert's Empire army (my enthralled stirgany minions, clearly - denial is the first step to acceptance, Robert) squared up against an alliance of Craigs Orcs and Goblins and Angus' Woodies.

In a gesture of friendship towards their new allies, the goblins offered to help the tree fairies with some gardening.

I knew this would be a tough one before we even began. Robert has proven himself to be passing decent as a general, but said his army was going to be absolutely tiny for an Empire force. I'd have to hold the weight of Craig's inevitable massive Orc bus. I'd played Craig once before, during last year's league, and it wasn't pretty. I didn't really make much of a dent if memory serves. Allied to this, he had the most bastardy, nimbly pimbly crackshot missile troops in those Wood Elves to back him up. It seemed like a nightmare combo! Both their armies were pretty much everything mine wasnt. Robert had gone gun line, so our (really bloody) sketchy plan was for me to tar pit them whilst he shot them to pieces.

Over the years I have observed that Robert has mastered just about every aspect of the game to make himself the 'complete' player. Part of that is being a cunning bastard. I arrived at the club to find that he'd already set up the table and that surprise, surprise it had no trees :-) Well done mate! Today, the woodies would fight in the desert! As both armies setup, it quickly became clear both sides were massing their troops at the same end of the table. The bulk of my army would be in the grinder, with Robert's artillery on the hill behind us. Opposite me was the orc bus, a 100 strong single mob of Gobbos about 20 ranks deep (!), two banks of woody archers, wardancers, dryads and doom divers. To hold this I had smartprice soft cheese with a couple of tangy olives chucked in. 60 zombies, 40 zombies, 30 ghouls led by a fighty vampire hero, and my blender lord at the head of 24 grave guard. Robert chucked down his stank at the centre of it to add a bit of backbone, or so we hoped.

The Wood Elves and their trusted greenskinned allies were surprised to find themselves fighting for their lives one evening in the deserts of Arabia...

The opposite wing had our cavalry. Robert's detachment of 5 outriders, 15 inner circle knights led by an elector count with a runefang (faced that before and he is damn scary. Nice he was on my side this time!), a L4 firemage on foot - alone (!) - 3 demigryph knights and my 4 bloodknights led by a fighty vampire hero, protected by the banner of blood keep to keep the doomdivers and woody archers off. Opposite them, they faced a treeman, a unit of skirmishing dryads, 5 spirithost gladeriders (I didn't know either - turned out they were just shitey fast cav) and a rock lobber. Our bold plan was for the bulk of my army to tarpit them and fix them in place whilst our cavalry wing swept all aside, rolled up their flank and arrived in the nick of time to smash into their infantry's exposed rear. As with any VC player relying on zombies to do a job, I had grave misgivings (heh,heh) about what would be left when the cavalry got there...

The squishy horde set off to get thumped, whilst controversially this time the Empire handgunners on the hill actually dont unload a storm of lead into their rotting husks. Its a crazy world we live in.

I rolled well for spells. The baby vamps got invocation to keep their respective mobs shuffling all night long. I rolled gaze for my L3 lord, but switched it out for raise dead as looking at the sheer numbers before him, it just wouldnt make a dent. He got curse as well, and I switched out vanhels for invocation. I didn't have much offensive wizardry, but raise may produce a speed bump or two, invocation could keep the show on the road whilst curse could really hurt the big greenskin units if I got it through. We rolled first for turn one, then Robert promptly popped a valve on the stank and blew it up, throwing shrapnel and bits of crewman tearing through my densely packed lines. Shite.

A selection of the views of the steam tank by my nearby ghouls and zombies. No action shots of its demise could be found as everyone nearby died. Next time the empire boys should perhaps give the NOz a miss and stick to shoveling coal.

The early turns were a waiting game for us on the 'grinder flank'. I tried my best to get the zombies to block the foot of the hill from Angus' advancing wardancers and dryads, whilst the rest spread to form a line between the manor house and the hillside. Roberts gunners on the hill did their best to chip away, his cannon notably scoring long range hits to wipe out a doom diver and ding four wounds off the treeman. On the cavalry flank, the gladeriders jinked past the demigryphs, leaving them taking the long way round to loop towards the greenskin artillery up the back. My bloodknights failed their charge on the dryads, but Roberts knights got there and made short work of them. They then reformed and the elector bagged the treeman with his sexy sword. It always stumps me how cheap empire characters are yet often how dangerous they can be...

The ghost scuttle off up front to be annoying, whilst the cheese line struggles to assemble behind them. Just out of shot to the left is a giant smoking crater where my backup used to be.

Turn two the orc bus failed a charge on me, buying us more time again. The wardancers and dryads however wasted a raised zombie speedbump and then one of my actual zombie units. Once done though, Empire artillery took its toll on them. Through his remarkable run of victorious smiting and reformation, Robert's cavalry completed the 'left hook' for us in turn three. They charged the back of an expensive unit of woody archers in the enemy centre, who broke and allowed the knights to overrun into the back of the orcs. After he weathered a couple of rounds of combat with them, my vampire hero with ghoul pack got in. Even though Angus piled his remaining wardancers into my flank, it wasnt enough. My extra ranks meant the orc bus lost its steadfast, causing it to break and run, where it was chased down.

Well that seemed like it was in bag... but step forward STEEL GOBLIN! The 100 strong goblin horde (only 5 wide) had by now milled through my other unit of 60 zombies. To pin them I charged my hitherto underused bloodknights into their rear. 'Job done' I thought. 'Piece of piss' and 'nice one, get a beer in' also came unbidden to mind. I'd pared a lot of shiny things off the list to afford these: 4 bloodknights led by a vampire hero. Thought if they worked in tandem with some empire knights, they could really smash some shit up. In they went, 16 strength 7 attacks at WS 5, and another 5 S4s off the steeds. Nae danger! Craig's ace up his sleeve was the unit's miniscule frontage. He'd front-rowed it with Goblin bosses with great weapons, and a black orc BSB. The lot of them made way to fight at the back and in a shower of mediocrity I missed with almost everything; in reply he killed three of my knight (ffs!!), and destroyed the rest on combat res. Shite: 400 points straight in the bin and a lesson once again to never, ever take blood knights! Then he reformed 20 wide and 5 deep to face the flank of my ghouls. Double shite.

Goblin Boss. I shall call him 'Lil' Bastard'.

The ghouls couldn't even hold a turn against them, even with the vamp, and melted on res. By now Robert's impeccable knights were off to the far flank mopping up the last unit of woody archers. His rear was also in jeopardy if the overrun from the ghoulish destruction was big enough. The game was back on, and the undead were stinking up the hall big time. Instead of charging in with my lord and his grave guard (the only fight worthy unit I had left) I sat back and we poured the gobbos full of lead and spells. I even got curse off! It did the trick and we took out a good 30 of them. Still a huge unit though. Craig charged in next round, but the lord's 'red fury' did the trick and the grave guard held them. Once some of the bosses started to go down, exposing the rank and file, the little green bodies were piling up nicely. Robert's cavalry (now leaderless after the orcs had gutted the elector for his trouble) made an epic charge and sandwiched the Gobbo unit in turn 6 and Craig called it. A win for the Empire-VC!

It was a stonking game - it looked like a big ask at the outset, came to us by turn three when their right flank collapsed and then swung away in turn 4/5 leaving us sweating like TV personalities from the 1970s. An entertaining win. The greenskin mobs are difficult to handle but the key to it I think rests in disrupting their ranks, going bigger than them to get steadfast off if possible, and killing the characters as quickly. Either that or just kill as many as you can as quickly as possible! Angus' woodies continue to shape up to be tough oppos, with brutal missile fire and magics. Other than the treeman and a limited number of wardancers though, he's not put down anything yet which has much oomph in combat. If he gets treekin, we're shafted but until then I like my odds against him! He's much better with the tree fairies than the dwarves he played in the league. Best thing in the game though was by far and away Robert's Elector Count with his unit of knights. I now eat my hat: cavalry is officially not dead in 8th ed!

Found Scibor minis do this wood elf mage for less than a tenner. Angus needs to have this model - its amazing! Wouldn't mind painting something like this myself...

As for playtesting the format, I felt the points were too large for a club tournament. We were all fairly brusque players and we got going early, but we didn't get done until after 10pm. Slower players simply wouldnt finish a 6 turn game. Craig's rules ideas such as no doubling up on magic items were all good though and added something, as it would force 'teams' to actually get together and discuss selection and tactics. James Craddock suggested 1000 pts a player, as they do in official GW tournaments; I see his point that it would mean we'd always finish, but in my opinion it would be at the price of interesting selection. 1000 pts feels really lean, especially for some of the character driven / elites armies. I think 1500pts a man was settled on after some discussion, so hopefully it will go from this 'happy' medium. Need to go put something together for the club forum for Craig now and get the tournament ball rolling...

I'll be back on here soon and log some of the stuff I've been playing over the last few months. It was easier to start with something fresh to mind for now, however. Off now to have a look at my turn 4 for the Ancient Greek play by mail wargame, which has just popped into my inbox :-) More on that soon...

Best Served Cold

Its been a very long time since I've had the chance to post here. Work has been heavier than ever, and on top of that I've been doing some freelance stuff. Many things have happened: another year older for one, forced to miss club nights and D&D nights to hit deadlines, yet there's been Dark Heresy, the Warhammer Vets League at the club, prep for club shows, a taste of D&D... and I finally trashed the Warriors of Chaos! (Woop!)

Back to dungeon to contemplate defeat. Heh.

After Harky's withdrawal, I shamefully made my appearance in the club vet's league as first 'standby' from 9th place in last year's league. The simple league ladder of 'everyone plays everyone once' system had proven cumbersome over time, so we trialled world cup style 'pools' of four players each for this one, with the top two of each group going through to knockout stages. All things considered, I reckoned I was in the easy group. Group A had overall first - Robert (although he opted to take in his daemons rather than continue with dark elves), Craddock with his ogres, Ryan and his High Elves, then Craig with the Greenskins. I landed up in Group B with Jamie's Tomb Kings, Geoffers' Skaven and Tam's Warriors of Chaos.

It takes 6 games in all to play out a group, so it has gone in pretty quickly. As I type this, there is only one left to go - a tense group decider for my pool between Geoffers and Tam. Mine were all very challenging games against tough opponents with good lists. I took Jamie first. My own army list had mainly stuck to one I trialled against Tam in his last foray with the old Warriors of Chaos book. Three screams, one mighty expensive (but alas not bulletproof) Strigoi King, a Mortis Engine, Terrorgheist, Grave Guard for the hard nut and lots of skelly and squishy cheese shepherded along by some low level necromancers.

I didn't deploy very well against Jamie, and I let myself be drawn into his killing zones too easily. He had a large unit of skelly archers, a skull catapult, necroknights on big cobras, a necrosphinx, tomb guard with tomb prince, a couple of wizards and a chariot unit. My terrorgheist did its job and almost took out the necroknights early on before nailing the catapult. The Vampire's unit took some catapult hits and magic damage on the advance. His chariots proved much tougher than I remembered, but once I engaged I was doing real damage. Unfortunately, every time he successfully got spells off (I think he had a level 4 mage if memory serves), then the casualties were standing right back up again. I hate it when that happens! Still, the vampire got his tomb guard unit down to the edge before a lucky hit from a rank and file guard lopped his head off with killing blow! After that I didn't have the teeth to hurt him, especially against that necrosphinx. The hexknights gave him a little fright by marauding over his lines, taking out the lesser mage, the bunker unit and the hierophant to boot - but by then alas it was too late! With no real quality left, he just milled through me.

Necrosphinx: not content with killing thousands, it came back to kill some more.

Tough opponents the TK. Either I seem to plaster them, or they return the favour and nail me. Stamping them out is the key. The number of spells they get off just sees their units continually bouncing back - even though most units don't seem intrinsically that dangerous to start with. He worked an interesting combo with the necrosphinx, taking a necrotect character which gave it a regen. save on top of its humongous toughness and good armour save. Very hard to kill!

Couple of weeks off club and then it was the battle with Tam. We played a river and a village on this one, in diagonally opposing corners. The bridge lay next to the obvious killing zone in the middle of the field. I got to set up on the river side, electing to put the 'soft' wing of the army behind it. The hard punching side would rush the village as his units emerged from round it. On the far of the village, opposing my heavy right, he placed his L4 mage general (3+ ward, rerolls all 1s!) on a disc, and 5 chaos knights. I would have to deal with them first before engaging with his centre. In the middle he fielded his war altar, vortex beastie, 2 units of 18 chaos warriors with heroes / champions, and the hellcannon. The knights would have to go fast - the disc I'd be lucky to catch so I decided to ignore it and focus on what I could actually kill. If I nailed the knights the vampire and his grave guard (supported by the terrorgheist) would swing around and hopefully roll up the flank of his line as they bogged down in my tar pit wing.

Hexknights (or hexwraiths, I suppose). Joyous distraction!

The knights fell after I made a (very) long charge, although they held on until the bottom of turn 2 due to their strong armour - which wasnt to plan. I moved skeletons onto the bridge to block it in the hope that Tam would go there and not actually try to just wade across. This fixed the main locus for the fighting. As the game wore on, my zombie units on the far left crawled ever so slowly forwards and into the river... The terrorghiest snuck around behind buildings to avoid charges and hopefully the attentions of the hellcannon. It went on to nail the vortex beast and decimate a unit of chaos warriors. The hex knights were superb in this battle: as ethereal fast cavalry they threaded through buildings and enemy units with ease. Even though the damage they dealt wasn't great, they held Tam's eye for the whole game and probably saved him from blasting the rest of my army to bits.

In a sweet turn of luck, the hellcannon misfired and immolated itself around turn 3. Shame that, really. The chaos warriors charged the bridge however and made short work of the skeletons. The other unit came around the village and eventually clashed with the vamp and his grave guard (heavily pummelled by the level 4 mage and a hellcannon hit). Nevertheless, the strigoi  proved to be worth his salt and tore them up. Putting the other trickster's shard on him played havoc with Tam's saves, which was all to the good! The screams from skabscrath, the terrorgheist and the mortis engine were also  taking their toll on chaos lines. As I'd planned, once his units were worn down, the rank bonus on my cheese units was helping them to make a mark in combat.

I love it when a plan comes together.

The battle in front of the bridge was tight until turn 5 though. The mortis engine blew after the war altar charged it, and then he used his altar's bound spell to buff up the chaos warriors. The chaos warrior unit on the bridge wiped out the skellies and came about to charge down towards the vampire battling the other chaos warrior unit. In the meantime, the strigoi had milled down the chaos warriors fighting him to a mere handful. Then Tam pulled his trump card and turned the unit hero into a daemon prince! Turns out they aint so tough - the vamp folded him like a pretzel and wiped out the remains of its unit for good measure. Mwahaha I love it when a plan comes together!

As a cherry on the cake - by my turn 6 the zombies had been growing steadily thanks to the necromancers (who both blew their own asses off and cascaded into the warp incidentally - I must be more careful with the minions...) and had finally waded across the river next to the bridge. The remaining chaos warrior unit - fresh from reducing my skellies to bonemeal - now had their backs to them and presented a ripe target. I charged them in the arse with the squishies, clipped one zombie to one chaos warrior (thanks to Craddock we no longer slide to maximise) and won by a landslide on combat res. The chaos boys bricked it and ran, only to be caught and torn to pieces by a 100 points of rotting, shambling tarpit cheese. Happy days!

Zombies attempt the victory powerslide. It cant end well.

Well, that cheered me up no end! No luck this time, Tam, although to be fair his list has taken a knock with the new book. Once he wraps his head around it, I'm sure he'll be back on form, but for now it was rather satisfying to stick the boot in whilst he was down. Yaas!

Last weekend I followed up the triumphant win with my final group game against Geoffers' Skaven. It was horrifying watching him set up. Three blocks of infantry - one of about 50, the others around 80 apiece. So many to kill.... These held the centre, with a war lightning cannon behind them, a doomwheel on his left, and a abomination on his right. I went for my usual cheese wing with the heavy right hook, although I changed deployment when I saw him stick his abomination down across from my cheese wing. I stuck the terrorgheist out there to fend it off, although unfortunately it was well away from the vampire's marching bubble, so was limited to a paltry 10" flying move.

The game started well. Geoffers, crept back towards his own table edge whilst my line lurched forwards to close. His doomwheel and my hexwraiths got into a standoff on either side of a building (I found out the doomwheel's bolts count as warp generated and are therefore magical attacks!), leading to the doomwheel failing its charge on my mortis engine in turn 2. Geoffers was also scared to have the terrorgheist get too close to the abomination, so instead of advancing it tracked right across the front of his own lines towards the centre.

The Abomination proved to be... abominable.

All seemed well - I was closing fast, the warp lightning cannon wasn't able to bring down the mortis engine and Geoffers seemed a bit nervous and made some unforced errors. Then he got off his 13th spell on the vampire and his grave guard, turning 14 of them into fecking rats! He withered them to boot, reducing their toughness permanently by 1. With so many models in front of them (and with ld 10 to boot off their ranks bonus) my army's screams were having little effect. The terrorgheist got the abomination down to half wounds, but then he promptly charged it with his monstrous beast and ripped its wings off. The general's unit engaged, killed shedloads over a couple of rounds of combat, but the skaven unit was always stubborn due to its ranks bonus, and I had nothing to flank with and disrupt him.

The impassible Skaven meatwall. Chewier than dried mutton.

He sealed it in turn 4  - it seemed to be floating in the balance until then - when the doomwheel fired its lightning bolts into combat and blew the mortis engine. The resulting blast killed my withered vamp and the army underwent a crumble test which wiped out the hexwraiths and a fair slice of my tarpit cheese (which had been growing like mould in a warm room until then). I had a few interesting points after: the skeletons actually outranked the skaven meat slab they were fighting at one point, robbing them of their stubborn rule and actually winning combat. It could have been mightily promising, especially as he failed the break - but he passed the reroll due to his battle standard bearer. The tow zombie units mobbed the abomination after the terrorgheist went down (and far too bloody tamely in my opinion!) and experienced some nasty damage from the beast. It has random attacks from a chart, a bit like a giant. Very nasty indeed against expensive well armoured troops, but with zombies who cares! I lucked out, beat it with combat res cos he didn't kill enough squishies, and chased it off the field. Satisfying, but alas it was a Pyrrhic victory. Still though, come on the zombies! Smashing a 300 pt unit of chaos warriors in one game and then bagging an abomination in the next! Just need to get the rest of the army to pull its weight now...

With my games in the pool done, I've scored 5 - not enough to get through, but it was fun and satisfying nonetheless. I had a fair shout at winning in each of the games, even though the TKs and Skaven ended up caning me in the end. Thoughts for the future? Enemy players concentrate all they have on the Mortis Engine and the vampire in that unit of grave guard. The hex wraiths are immensely good fun now I've figured out how to use them, and no one expects the untold powers of a zombie horde! I need to have a good think about army selection next time out though. The Strigoi is hard, but he's too many eggs in one basket, and his save is not good enough. Running him close to the Mortis Engine to up his regen. is too dangerous as it inevitably blows and hurts him. The grave guard are catching too much flak as well. The terrorgheist is a champ though. Maybe next time I should take two?

Time to have a think about it all.

The last month has seen a good few Tuesday RPGs go down too.  Martin ran another session of D&D, with his Ravenloft adventure. This time the party moved from the city down to a good old dungeon crawl as we penetrated into a tomb and began to uncover what the Dark Lord of the place is up to. There was more Dark Heresy too from Robert, which has been pimpass good fun. More of that in the next post however! Times knocking on so for now, its time for bed...

Sump Flood!

Not much going on tonight, so I'm using my time to move along the club's Necromunda campaign. I put the new pitfighter stuff out last night (see post below), and I've just finished off posting up the new scenario. I've not built the swing bridge model I'd intended for the 'toxic river' scenario yet, so I've gone with 'sump flood'. I shamelessly lifted the idea from the Yakromunda website resource archive, but added my own rub on it to personalise it for our own campaign. I'm looking forward to playing this one myself. I like the idea of heavies breathing out their arse and scrambling up ladders to avoid the rising toxic gunk as enemy gangers perched on nearby buildings pepper the bulkheads with bullets and lasfire...



SUMP FLOOD

The Papa doesn't like the way things are going, so he's taken matters into his own hands. Folks from all round these parts have been coming down out of their vents, shafts, and far flung domes to congregate in Blake's Pit's largest settlements for the annual festival to mark the Emperor's Name Day. Once a year the big towns hold bustling celebrations where the bars and flophouses creak at the seams with revellers and the streets are packed tight with traders and entertainers of every strain.

Fiddler's Elbow was always jumping.

The town of Fiddler's Elbow, at the heart of Boss Blake's turf is one such mecca for party-goers; due to its size it offers the best bars, nightclubs and gambling dens for miles around. Located at the centre of Sputnik dome it sits on a crossroads for people round these parts, and is always the busiest place for miles aroud.. Unfortunately for these teeming masses, the Papa is privy to a little titbit of information unbeknowst to almost all. Sputnik dome sits over the main effluent conduit for the midhive munitoria miles above. The pipes themselves run right under Fiddler's Elbow town square. The Papa has bided his time until the moment was right. Now the moment is here...

Papa Tango's agents have been busy - the explosive charges have been set, the timers wind to zero detonation is imminent! Few can guess at the horror to be unleashed. Even fewer will survive!

Sump Flood is a campaign scenario to be fought between 2-4 gangs from rival factions. The festivities in Fiddler's Elbow were a magnet for the great and the good,  welcome friends and despised enemies. For one day a year, everyone goes. The scenario starts as a gang fight. At the beginning of the second turn, the gunk from the gushing sump flood rises d6-2 inches. It will do this at the start of each full turn thereafter (ie at the start of the turn for whichever player went first).

Sludge is going to erupt like a volcano!

The gunk is vile, toxic and deadly. Any fighter standing in 1" of gunk moves at half rate. Any fighter standing in 2" of it takes an automatic flesh wound, and moves at half rate. If caught in 3", the fighter is out. Downed fighters caught in any gunk automatically go out of action. Falling damage into gunk is suffered as normal, and the gunk doesnt offer any cover. The gunk will never go higher than 10"

For set up, use a 4' x 4' board, and place the higher buildings towards the centre of the table. This should be a rat race to the top of the highest buildings! The objective of the game is to eliminate the opposing gang before your own succumbs to the toxic sump gunk! Experience is accrued as per a normal gang fight, with the exception that fighters receive d6+2 exp for surviving rather than the usual d6. Good luck, and get climbing!

Got my swimmin' goggles on!

INTO THE PITS!

Mid term hols from work just now, so a bit of a breather to get some gaming stuff done. Last night I took the chance to get some more material down for the club's Necromunda campaign. Its been too long since I had the chance to get out new scenarios for the campaign, and I'm wary of letting it peter out, especially with attention now turning to the club's WHM vet's league.

The idea is to allow Necromunda 'quickies' with players choosing to risk their best combat fighters down in the pits for potentially handsome experience and financial reward. The dangers of losing of course will put off some! I found the scenario sifting through a 'settlement events' pack for Necromunda on the Yakromunda website - which is an amazing resource! Gangers go in for the fight, accompanied by the gang leader as 'minder' and the one who puts the bets on. There is a random events table to roll on before the fight commences, which affects the betting with results such as the leader getting pickpocketed and losing all his creds, to fighters being under the weather and suffering stat mods, or even just legging it and not showing up! The fighting is limited to hand to hand combat weapons only (and no sword or power weapons), so its purely a dirty bludgeoning match. I'm hoping to use the game board from Martin's Spartacus set to stage these as it would look immense!

I'm going wear your spleen like a hat!

Players simply pick a ganger to fight, and grab someone to play the pit fighter (randomly generated from the Outlanders book). No campaign points available for this one on account of its scale, but players could build up legendary reps for their combat specialists here, so it should make for good sport if enough of the lads go for it. No doubt Craddock will rule house if he puts an Ork boy in there! If it catches on and people build reps for their boys, we could have ganger on ganger pit fights and cut out the pit slave. Other campaign players who want to watch could bet gang credits on the outcome...

Now this is just awesome.

I wrote this bit of fluff below to set the scene. Quaego is back, although a bit damaged. When I sent out the faction offers to draw the players into the campaign 'camps', Tam's leader got jumpy and shot poor Quaego in the face!

This ones got balls of steel!

PIT FIGHTER

Quaego leaned in close, too close for your likin’. His swarthy bulk was oppressive in the close space, seeming to loom over you like the walls of some implacable edifice.  The ever present stogie hung as always from one corner of his stygian visage. The other half of his face was a monstrousity of soldered plates, cable and whirring gears.  A trigger happy ganger had fragged him in the grid a few months back. Would have killed any normal underhiver outright – only reasonable outcome, to be sure.  Seemed it took more than a double tap to the head to put down a lump of meat like Quaego though. 

Now here you were again, feelin’ like a bug stuck to flypaper as he set to asking you his questions. Always with the fucking questions! The red glow of the artificial optic telescoped in on you with a sterile whine as you weighed the question in your head.

‘Well,’ a shovel  like hand scooped the stump of the stogie from his lips as he exhaled a cloying, acrid cloud, like the smokestack on an Imperial munitorium. ‘You sure your man is up to this?’ The baleful glow of the optic swept up and over your shoulder to dwell on your boy.  Your eye couldn’t help but be drawn by that deprecating gaze.  Through the jumble of jostling, sweaty bodies you found Icy standing against the far wall, drinking in the spectacle playing out below. The lad was trying hard to look as mean as a man could, but was coming off looking like a great big streak of piss instead. You stifled a grimace at the sight of the little bastard. 

Icy wasn’t much to look at. You might of guessed he was only nineteen or twenty. He didn’t even know himself. You’d picked him up after finding him wandering alone through the old ruins by Butler’s Gooch.  He wore threadbare clothes scabbed off corpses and didn’t have so much as a two bit stubgun to protect himself. Mean little cunt with a blade though. Kept his head down when the lead was flying and would wait for his moment. The creepy little bastard was a fucking surgeon with a blade when he got in close. Could give a man a DeVannian necktie in a heartbeat. The lads started calling him ‘Icy’ after they saw that, on account of how it left you feelin’ once you saw his handiwork. 

Useful as he was, Icy was startin’ to give the rest of the lads the heebie jeebies. It was time to get shot of him, and you didn’t fancy being the one to break the news to him. The thought of waking up with your tongue yanked through a new hole in your neck wasn’t a particularly edifying one. So it came down to this: either you emptied a round into the little bastard’s head whilst he slept, or you made a few creds out his demise down here… You lifted your bottle of Scuzz and took a long hard draw as you eyeballed the juve.

‘He don’t look much, but he’ll do just fine.” You wish you sounded surer – even you could hear the doubt in your own voice. Quaego’s glowering optic burned into Icy, drinking him in and not much caring for the taste.

‘I don’t want another ten second wonder out of you. If the crowd aint happy,’ Quaego took another heavy drag on the stump of the stogie, savouring the silky smoke that seemed to wash away the taint of Icy, ‘then Quaego aint happy.’ The stygian giant’s two heavy eyes – natural and machine – swept back to you. He paused for a moment, and that fucking oppressive stare of his seemed to press you down into the very floor. ‘No one disappoints Quaego twice.’ You gulped hard at the implication, and hoped to whatever Gods were listening that the gains would outweigh the risk.

‘He’ll fight. My man’ll put on a show, rest assured. Give him the best you’ve got, you’ll see.” Another drag on the Scuzz, and you could hear your own pulse hammering in your ears, even over the bestial cacophony of the arena. Shit! You always let your mouth run when you got nervous. Now look where it was fucking getting you! Quaego seemed real pleased though.  That great buckled face of his twisted into a leering grin as he swept an impossibly trunk like arm around your reluctant shoulders.

‘Good’, just for a moment those heavy eyes danced. ‘I should never have doubted you! The boy will do us proud – now lets go place us our bets…’ As giant gangster led you off into the stalls, you wondered how the juve was going take the news. Seemed honesty would be the best approach.

‘See how I said we were coming down here to watch the pit fights tonight lad? Well, that’s not quite on the mark. You see, I will be watching the pitfight son, but you’re not. No, you’re going to be in it…”

The Colonel and his chicken!

Another two weeks gone in, and too much time has passed before getting back to the blog... Its putting me in the mind of a certain Mike Myers film and his Dad's fortnightly craving for CHICKEN! Damn the Colonel, with his wee beady eyes! Anyhows, been mind blowingly busy with work <again>, cant wait until April for it to blow over again... No halt to the gaming though!

A week last Sunday I had a second go at Tam's Warriors of Chaos. After Geoffers' withdrawal from the vets league and Harky's no show, it opened up a space for the gloriously placed 9th place player to come in. Lo and behold the Vampire Counts have risen again (who would have guessed it!). I needed some practice at the 2k points total set for the vet's league, so it was high time for a game. I felt like I'd pretty much beat out all the most useful permutations for the 1500pts tally set for last years WFB league, but now there was scope for some juicy new toys. The 2k list I'd run the week before in the double header with Robert against Angus and Craddock seemed fun to play and fairly effective if used correctly, so I tweaked that and gave it a whirl.

When I met him in the league, Tam was a hardened 40k player, but a relative fresh faced noob to fantasy. His army was unusual, as he is the first person I've seen run WoC for a good 15 years, and he was already tasting success. I had a couple of vamps, a black coach, ghouls, wraiths, grave guard and the usual core cheese. I knew his troops were hard, but I thought I had a fair chance. For his part, he was fielding the hellcannon, 5 knights and a couple of big units of warriors. Turned out it was a massacre! I managed to ding a couple of knights, but it was truly a grim spectacle to behold as he steamrollered me with his big, tough, nigh invulnerable troops... Grim times indeed.

Ye trusty coach - been a while since its been out of the mausoleum.

So this was revenge time then. I'd played alongside Tam since with his WoC, in a 6 player dark vs light storms of magic game. It was 2k a player then, and to be fair his army alone could have won the game for us. This game was going to be tough! I took a plethora of cheese - nearly 100 zombies and 40 skellies to tarpit him on one flank, with two necromancers to restore casualties. On the other flank was the heavy right hook - a mortis engine, alongside 5 crypt horrors and a grave guard unit with a supercharged strigoi-ghoul king. I also had a terrorgheist to give back-up. Tam's army was an evolution of his 1500 force, with the knights dropped for 12 chosen warriors, a level 4 mage for general, a new war altar and some warhounds to make up the points.

Chosen Warriors: 95% immune to death.

My tactic was to hold back with the cheese, move to get round the back on the left with the terrorgheist, and go in on the right with my heavy 'hook'. I had 3 screams to soften them up - scabscrath on the ghoul king, the banshees on the mortis engine, and best of all the terrorgheist. Hopefully this would get past all that chaos armour and down some of those walking tanks!

The tactics bore some fruit. He met my 'hook' with his chosen: 4+ armor and 3+ ward saves all round! The screams did some fair damage, downing a few. I managed to take down the war altar, but it had already done its work, augmenting his chosen at the outset of the game. His L4 mage swooped around behind me on his disc, but I was spared much damage from him or the hellcannon by Tam's appalling rolls. In turn 3 his mage even nuked himself and cascaded off into the warp. Heh. I'd hoped to put the grave guard and the crypthorrors in at the same time on the chosen, but the grave guard couldn't make the charge due to spacing. Instead I charged the strigoi out solo to aid the horrors. Dangerous, but it was an eggs in one basket list - he cost the points and he'd have to earn them. Disastrously though, the horrors made it and he didn't. They survived two rounds of combat with S5 WS6 A2 troops with a 4+/3+ save, but the strigoi took 3 TURNS to charge those 10 inches. By the time he got there, the task was too much even for him (even so, he damn well nearly did it, gah!) Not meant to be. The mortis engine got hellcannoned and went nuclear about the same time. Through his misfortune as much as my design, I'd reduced the warhounds, altar, mage lord and taken down half the chosen on one flank, but now my cheese wing faced two units of 18 warriors backed with a hellcannon. It would only be a matter of time...

The Mortis Engine- with any luck mine will look not too far off this in a couple of months

The terrorgheist did some good work though. With Tam unsettled by the Mortis Engine, he focussed the hellcannon fire on that, allowing the Terrorgheist free rein. I worked him around the back of Tam's line and screamed into the warrior unit on his right flank, reducing it down to only 6 warriors before the general died and the crumble test snuffed it out.

Post game analysis? Did much better than last time out, and the screams did some notable damage. There was a fair dead pile on Tam's side - but at the same time he was quite unlucky with his own dice rolls this time out. My general's double failed charge was critical - but once he, the grave guard and the horrors went down, the army had almost no teeth to it. Quite grim to see actually! The ward saves the chaos troops get with the table they roll on seem almost insurmountable when combined with how good individual rank and file are in hand to hand. The best way to deal with the hellcannon also seems to be to leave it alone and hope that it blows itself up... Not good! Hopefully the new book will balance the WoC out a bit more before I face them again.

Life in the 40k universe - walk softly and carry a big gun... oh, and always use 'burst fire'. It rocks.

The following Tuesday, 'Gunner' Cutter got his autopistol out again for round two of Dark Heresy at Robert's. Martin joined us for this one, bringing a cog boy into the group. Playing out the 'Illumination' mission, we went off to hunt down the aborigine seeress after she turned her back on the Abbot and legged it. By the time we'd questioned her and gotten back to the cathedral, everything had predictably gone pete tong. Brother Lazarus was down and bleeding out through a selection of new holes in his chest in the Abbot's house, where we found a smashed in data slate telling us our superior had been possessed by a local godly spirit and was hellbent on opening a gate into warp space inside the cathedral. Off we went to finally get a look inside the cathedral and there he was floating in the air with tarot cards spinning around him as he chanted to a big swirling warp rift in the ceiling.

Shoot him in the bulbs!

As we went in to get him, the Abbot revealed himself as the true villain - completely possessed by the spirit of the Crowfather, and noodling about like something out of Silent Hill. He made a mess of James' scribe and it all seemed a bit hopeless and grim with most of the party paralysed by terror until Craddock's PC double tapped the critter in its milky white bulbs with his autopistol and blew the tainted swine back into the screaming warp. Gah, we'll never hear the end of it! Perhaps death and eternal soulless damnation would have been preferable to sharing a space cruiser to the next mission with a new 'Hero of the Imperium'... Good game again though, so props to Robert. Still feels quite fresh, and I'm enjoying the system and the setting. The party took a group award for XP and a bounty and all busied themselves buying upgrades for their characters, so no doubt next time we'll have some new toys to use!

Last Sunday it was back to the club again, this time for my second match in the Flames of War 600 league. This time I'd be leading my Wehrmacht Infantry Company against Dougie's filthy, lice-ridden Commie dogs. The scenario was a straight up battle, with two objectives in either deployment zone. To win, you had to start a turn with one of your units on an objective in the enemy's DZ.

He had so many men! Dougie literally filled his side of table from side to side. He had a carpet of infantry, with a couple of hmg teams attached to the platoons. The red dogs had 4 field artillery guns for support. My single platoon of infantry, mortar platoon, StugD and half track seemed paltry in comparison; however this game taught me the value of getting infantry dug in. Whilst my mortars rained down barrage fire on the red wave, my infantry dug in over one objective, ably covered by a wood. The StugD held the other along with my company command. As he came at me, my Stuka's (all but useless, they only turned up twice) harried his artillery and his left flank infantry. They were slowed but came on - as his platoon crested a rise across the middle of the field, my platoon opened up with 12 dice and butchered them! Dougie's surviving platoon members failed their break test and legged it off the field. One objective would be safe at least.

Cant you see them, Yuri? The Germans are the trees over there!

The mortar platoon bogged down the Russian platoon moving up to occupy the village in the centre, supported with occasional fire from a base of my dug in infanrty and an odd shot by the StugD. They would sit there in cover in the centre of the table for the duration of the game. On Dougie's right, my StugD and the half track held the objective against Dougie's last infantry platoon, which he initially held back. My company command made a bold attack - and even got close enough to assault the enemy in their DZ, but got plastered for their efforts. As the Ruskies came back at me, the mortars and my lonely armour pinned them continuously and whittled them away. I even eventually forced him to make a break test on them (if he failed they'd be off and I'd win by default), after which the survivors scarpered off to hide in terrain in the table centre.

Pesky Russian artillery.

This left the path open for the noble StugD to scoot off solo and drive onto the objective in Uncle Joe's right flank DZ! By this point it was turn 14 - the scenario imposed no turn limit, and both sides had been bogged down and pinned into a stalemate by turn 6, so I felt this had some potential. If I could survive Dougie's turn, then the game was mine! The StugD had studiously avoided LoS from Dougie's artillery for the entire game after a near fatal speculative shot early on, and it now took 6 rounds from the 3.5" guns that could draw a line on it. Three shots hit and I saved on two and drew on the last. If Dougie could pass a firepower test, he'd save his bacon - other than that the game was mine.

Poor, beat up StuG. So brave, so naive.

He passed it. Balls. The Fuhrer will be disappointed. The StugD went pop (note to self: buy bigger Stug), and the ruskies in the centre broke out and made for the now hideously exposed and unprotected mortar platoon. Ah well, that was it all over now. Still though, I got 2 league pts for breaking one of Dougie's platoons, so not a total loss - and it was an pic game! It flowed much better this time round, thanks to Dougie's knowledge of the rules. Looking forward to my next opponent - I think it may be Kev, with his weak-kneed Highlanders.

Nice components - lots of pieces though!

Last of all, D&D was called off on Tuesday as a couple of the guys couldn't make it. We played the 'Game of Thrones' board game for the first time. It was great! All houses - except for Arryn - can be played, and players vie for land, power, wealth and station just as in the books. At first look, the game seemed quite complex, with many steps and procedures in a game turn. Martin had predicted we'd only get to turn two or three, but we rattled along and made it to the full ten.

I drew House Stark, which was quite a fun position. Up in the north the resources are stretched thin across great swathes of land, but you dont have to contend with rivals snapping at you from all sides like the Martells, Baratheons and Lannisters did! The map makes for some really excellent strategic minefields as the players balance for power and risk conquests vs. consolidation.

For a little while at least, winter was coming...

In the end, Robert blocked my bid for glory - the git - and in a three way tie for the turn 10 win between Martin's Greyjoys, Tam's Tyrells and myself, it came down to seeing who had the most strongholds (home provinces) and then to who had the highest supply rating. Tam took it in the end. That man really does have the golden touch. I cant wait until I own him one day and hammer the shit out of him!

Looking forward to next Sunday at the club now. I've got a 2k practice game lined up against Rambo to have one last practice with my VC list for the vet's League. I also hope to get the next scenarios up for the club;s Necromunda campaign, as its been a fair while and I dont want to leave it hanging.