Blood Angels Champion

Thomas brought his Almaran the Gold figure from Reaper over on Sunday and I offered to convert it for him. We used a pair of Space Marine legs but I couldn't get the fit right...

Enter the resin base.

The uneveness of the base gives some justification to his somewhat awkward pose.
Hopefully he will look OK once fully painted...

Blood Bowl Game 3 and FUBAR 40K Game 1

My computer had a booting problem and as my keyboard was a wireless one I couldn't remedy the problem until I bought a cheap (S$11) 'corded' keyboard after today's game.

I am a computer-idiot, but after some trial and error I managed to reboot it from an alternative drive or something... but all the desktop icons and files are gone and so are many of the programmes, including my usual picture editor, so I am only uploading two today...

The first is from Game 3 of our Blood Bowl series. fg's Nurgle team scored their first touchdown of the series, but I managed to equalise in the second half and a lucky deviation on the kick-off dice placed the ball right on his end-zone, making it impossible for him to score in the remaining time. We drew the game, but three if his players gained new skills at the end of the game; none of mine did, plus my fans, disappointed by my performance, deserted me, leaving me with a lower Fan Factor.


The second picture is from our first FUBAR game. Thomas fielded his Blood Angels in their first game ever. The scenario was designed around the crashed spacecraft from GW, the objective being to capture the pilot of that craft alive and bring her off one's table-edge.

Martin and I took my green Marines (I really ought to give them a name...) and decided to set up firing positions to whittle down Thomas' Blood Angels as they approach. This worked to a certain extent - Thomas lost 2 squads trying to reach the pilot. However, just when we were going to grab the pilot ourselves his Dante figure leapt forward, seized her, and in the next activation leapt away. We had one chance to intercept him with our closest squad (my Assault Marines with jump-packs having spent most of the game in 'reserve', having failed most of their activations), but we failed the activation and lost our chance.

The game wasn't long enough for us to get a good appreciation of the rules, but the basics seem to be right - my Terminators got caught in the open and were decimated. We did forget the rule about squads with 50% strength left falling back on a failed activation, which would have extricated them though. We probably will need to house-rule some terrain penalties for movement, but I am keen to give them another try.

Strandhogg news

Ken Altfather (a suitable name for the author of a set of Viking Age wargame rules if there ever was one), in a reply to a post on TMP, had revealed that he may still have copies of the rules.



Gentlemen,

Thank You for the kind words about Standhogg. It was really just a labor of love on my part more than anything else. I am glad to see that folks are still enjoying them.


As my friend Scott stated, I created the rules all in house. After a while it got to be a bit much to keep up with despite the day job and family. It's too bad really. I was half way done with updates for Irish, Scots, Crusaders and Moors.


I am headed out of town for T-day but when I return I can see if I still have any complete sets left. If you are interested please drop me a note at Kaltfather1 at Rochester DOT RR DOT Com.


Have a Happy Thanksgiving.


Ken

So if you have been hunting for a copy, drop him an email!

Scout Squad

I'm still waiting for my latest order of resin bases to arrive to base the ones I painted today, but they are all done.

I feel a little guilty fielding these figures in my Space Marine force, not because they are not official GW or WYSIWYG, but because of the sexist sci-fi equivalent of the "chainmail bikini" some of them are wearing. Despite that, they are all very nice sculpts.

I can't decide which one of them I like best: the MG gunner on the left has that "No. Have you?" attitude about her, the figure next to her has a very dynamic pose (and beautifully-sculpted coat), and the figure on the right is the Reaper figure (based on the movie "Sucker Punch" no doubt) that started this little group to begin with.

I like that they all have a certain Soviet whiff about them, and that means I can expand this force by adding any similarly styled female sci-fi figures I come across in the future.

Equal Opportunity Recruitment

Here are two of the Urban Mammoth female soldiers I have been painting up as the Scout Squad for my Space Marines force. I've chosen a flatter shade of green for them as the Citadel Dark Angels Green has a glossy finish; it's actually the same green on my older marines.

Although they have an anime look about them, I have chosen to paint them all with black hair... let's just say these women are such dedicated soldiers, they dyed their hair and eyebrows black (but still didn't wear camouflage paint on their faces...).

Updates

Four of my gaming buddies are teachers, so campaign season follows the school holidays - and December is the long school break.


Thomas sent me a photo of his Blood Angels today; it just so happens that I took a photo of all my painted Space Marines this afternoon too.



  

In the meantime Adrian has been making steady progress on his Ultramarines. If everything goes according to plan, we should be playing our first game of 40K this year.

Also, Rick the Flag Dude sent me free flags to replace the ones he sent me earlier when he found out that the shade of blue on the first batch didn't match that of the Maverick Models ones. Thanks once again, Rick.

I also took a shot of all my dwarves (minus the female ones which I forgot...). I've been toying with the idea of getting some movement trays and then using them for maybe Impetus type of rules, but with 8 foot figures and 4 mounted to a tray I will only have enough for 7 or 8 units per side - not quite the stuff of big battles, eh?

Meanwhile, I am procrastinating on restarting my work on the Perry WOTRs and have instead started painting the female sci-fi figures I bought earlier; they can form a Scout Squad for my Space Marines force since I need another Troop option to make my force legal.


This weekend also see my taking advantage of Maelstrom Games' 25% discount on their Bane Legion range. Most of their beasts are too disturbing for me, but their beastman standard bearer seems to fit well with the look of the Avatars of War beastman warchief, which I have been eyeing for a long time now - I bought both. Maybe they will form the cadre of an eventual beastmen army (those Reaper beastmen look good too, don't they?) or I may never get round to forming a full beastmen army, but you never know...

Up

A long weekend allowed me to complete my Assault Squad and Chaplain.


I like how the boys look, even if they did take me a long time to paint.

The Chaplain figure looks quite good, even if I do say so myself. He also marks the first concession I made towards 40K.

You see, up until now I have painted and organised my Space Marines in a generic fashion with no real adherence to any Codex; when I made the decision to refurbish them earlier this year, I planned to organise them according to FUBAR lists. Dan first offered me a Chaplain figure when we made a trade earlier, but I declined as I didn't really see myself having a use for one. Then FG just dropped one off at my place and said something about modelling it with the jump-pack on...

It was quite a while before I decided I would paint it, and then another while before I decided that I would paint it black instead of green like my other marines, as per the Codex - even my apothecary was painted green instead of white as required by the codex.

I then looked at a couple of forums before deciding to use magnets to make it possible to field him with the normal backpack or the jump-pack, and arming him with a plasma-pistol instead of a bolt-pistol - apparently giving him the jump-pack and plasma-pistol and attaching him with the Assault squad was the thing to do. With Adrian and Thomas making progress on their Space Marines, I have to seriously look at making my force kosher.

FG also passed me a special shoulder-pad - I like the words on them.

My force is still not 100% Codex-compliant - still needs 15 more vanilla marines and one vanilla terminator figure if I were to comply with the minima for heavy weapons, but hopefully the guys will let it slide.

With these guys done I guess I should go back to painting the Perry plastics, but I feel I need a break... Perhaps the release of their WOTR cavalry set will be the needed boost?