Dalin Worlds Liberation pt.1

    My gaming time has gone from every Wednesday like clockwork to random games caught whenever I can get out of work at a sensible time but that doesn't mean I can't get games in. My normal game for the last year or so has been Bolt Action with a few other rulesets thrown in for a bit of variety. In the weird gap between pre-ordering the second edition and actually getting it, however, playing more of the first edition has just felt wrong? So my current regular opponent (Dan) and me, got chatting about what else we wanted to do and somehow stumbled upon doing a 40k campaign.

      One of my life goals (I promise the rest of my list is much more impressive and profound than this one) is to collect a whole space marine company, every single man of the 107 men. It's something I have wanted to do ever since I first got into the hobby and I finally decided to start this year, before I got distracted and the project was sidelined and it took a certain conversation about a campaign gave it a kick start again.

 We decided to play a couple of really small games to start with just to get our head around the rules, both of us being at least 2 editions behind the times. Dan used his Blood Angels as they were his only 40k army that was somewhere obvious enough to grab in short notice, while I played my home brew chapter - the Aurora Knights.*

*More about these another day

The Campaign Begins

     The Dalin worlds are made up of Dalin Prime and it's moon, Dalin Secundas, both are peaceful civilised worlds that have never given the Imperium any problems, but in recent years the annual tithe hasn't been paid and the Inquisition isn't taking this well. *Enter stage left - The Aurora Knights*

One of the things we decided to do with this campaign was to make it a mix of Battlefleet Gothic and 'normal' 40k, both would affect the other. 

The first game saw my Battlebarge being ambushed and having to flee until my reserves came on. I got my Battlebarge off the board but at a seriously high cost. First game in and my chapter had lost 2 Strike Cruisers, one had gone supernova and the other was a hulk drifting in the void, while my Battlebarge barely limped away.

We decided that the floating hulk would be a really valuable prize to any fleet ,so we played a game to simulate Dalin's troops boarding it to secure it, so it could be towed back to their shipyards. I went into this game really confident, Space Marines taking on small groups of Imperial Guard? Easy. 

At this point, I should mention that I've never seen Storm Troopers on the table before and it really showed. Storm Troopers are hard! I mean really hard! Their guns ignore power armour and their armour save works against bolters. This match up went really badly for me. It was all over by turn 4. Dan's troops had secured themselves a Strike Cruiser.

The objective was a computer terminal (the cream pillars in the photo below) but as he wiped my last squad off the board by the end of his 4th turn this was a moot point.

     The initial engagements of the campaign have not treated my chapter well, 2 of my chapter's 5 capital ships have been lost and 2 whole battle companies lost. A massive loss for any chapter, but really good fluff for a gamer to play with.

Thanks for reading

Odds and Sods 2

    Just a really quick post this time to show the odds and sods that have worked their way across my desk in the recent week or so.

   

     First are more German tank crew from Artizan Designs' pulp range. They are early war but fit in really nicely to fill out both my squads, while the female crew(wo)man was just too cool not to pick up at the same time. Thank you for the suggestion Simon!

    Next up are yet more fantasy figures I bought when I first started looking into Frostgrave. I suspect I went too heavy buying up random interesting figures for the game but while there is no pressure to get them painted and I can just do them as I fancy, they have been really good fun in between other projects. There is generally one on my desk at all times.

I'm aiming for a slightly more substantial post next time, so, thanks for reading

More scatter terrain for Afghanistan

    My on-going attempt to fill my Aghan table with interesting scatter terrain has been a really fun project to keep me occupied. All the bits in this post have been built and painted over the course of a few weeks, basically, whenever I get an idea, I don't want to get to the point where this is ever forced.

The first bit is less scatter terrain and more added detail - in this case, 

the teddy bear in the doorway.

This second bit is the second road sign in the pack from Empress Miniatures. I wanted something that looked like it was from an election and didn't want to offend anyone or do something set at a particular time - so I created my own using various images from the web. 

The bin bags are from TT Combat.

This next bit is, at best, charitably counted as cover. I doubt a pile of cardboard boxes will save you from a bullet but they might let you sneak up on a position. Boxes are TT Combat.

I think the weapons table was stolen from something I saw online a while back but it has been floating around in my ideas pile for so long that it had to be done, plus it can be the focus of a mission - stop the weapons dealer.

Barrels and boxes are TT Combat, board is the side of an afghan wagon I didn't use and various guns and ammo are from the Assualt Group.

Again, going for line of sight blocking more than real usable cover, I wanted the scenery to include real life bits not just properly defendable hiding places. So a pile of tyres felt like the answer. Again, the tyres are from TT Combat - what a great pack that was.

Our first test run of Modern Bolt Action. In the future, I would like a much denser board, but for the amount we are playing at the moment, this is perfectly adequate.

Thanks for reading