Broadside and weekend gaming

   What was supposed to be a weekend with a single game in it, turned into one hell of a hobby weekend. Let's start at the beginning, Saturday was supposed to be a game of 40k Apocalypse, a chance for 4 players to get all their big toys onto a table to see the 7th edition out in style, but as the only person that didn't end up bailing, this didn't happen.
   So, instead, on Sunday one of my mates and me took a trip to the Broadside show in Sittingbourne, aiming to try out a couple of things, see some familiar faces and buy some more models, then maybe carry on our Imperial Assault campaign in the afternoon. This went, broadly, to plan;

The first game we go involved in was 4th edition Flames of War. Honestly, (and I am bound to offend someone with this statement) I have have never heard anything good about Flames of War, but the 4th edition seems completely different and we really enjoyed ourselves. So much in fact that my mate bought himself two copies of the starter set so we could replay this game in the future.

The second game we tried was a game that is still in development called Valhalla. It is a good little game, but I don't know if it is bringing anything new to the genre, being somewhere between Open Combat and Saga in complexity and game size, and not being better than either. 

The last game we played at the show was an escape from Jurassic Park game. Described to us as 'like Yahtzee', it was brutally simple but a great show game. And, yes, I got away - just.

   With the limit of 4 hours in the car park, we made our move fairly soon after this, aiming to play some more games at home. Carrying on the weekend's tradition of not sticking to plans, we decided to play Thunderbirds (probably still my favourite board game at the moment) instead of Imperial Assault and, like normal, lost more games than we won.

   The other great thing about the Broadside show was that it had a proper bring and buy stand, so, obviously, this is where my money went. I went with all the best intentions, knowing that with the 8th edition of 40k coming out this weekend and my normal gaming mate really pushing to start playing 40k in a real way again, that I needed to save some money to at least buy the rulebook and a codex but that went out the window as soon as I saw there was some Battlefleet gothic on the stall. A quick trip to eBay and I now have a 1000 point fleet ready to paint. Suffice to say, mistakes were made and 40k looks like it can wait another month. . .

Thanks for reading

Assemble the fleet, Admiral!

   I was organising my normal Monday night game last week and it dawned on me that I had done quite a lot of work on my Space Marine Battlefleet Gothic fleet and had painted up a Navy fleet too but hadn't blogged about any of it*.
   First up is my Imperial Navy fleet as it is the one I am using the most at the moment. Again, like my Space Marine fleet, I have been buying whatever was cheap on eBay, rather than planning a fleet and paying full whack to get them, this has led to my fleet being a bit of a mix of things.

* I assume this is due to the models being painted and packed

 into foam straight after varnishing ready for an immediate game.

Emperor Battleship.
This is the one big ship that was not planned at all. I had something a lot more 'shooty' on my shopping list, maybe a Retribution or an Apocalypse, but this was the ship that was cheap. While unplanned, it has turned out to be one hell of a ship, she has just about dealt with whatever situation I have put her in and (mostly) come out fighting.

Overlord Battlecruiser

The 3 cruisers were a sorry looking job lot that were so badly looked after that I couldn't tell what ships they actually were from the photos, but a bit of time spent tidying them and a new paint job can do wonders.

Dictator Cruiser

Gothic Cruiser

Firestorm Escorts
These Firestorms should be pretty familiar as they are the ones I used for my Space Marine fleet, stripped and repainted, they look much happier in the grey of my Imperial Navy. I am currently in the process of bulking up all my escort squadrons to 5-6.

Thanks for reading

The most unnecessary guard in fiction?

   On Friday night, I found myself staying up later than planned, fixed to the tv watching the modern A-Team film, the only reason I mention this is that it was extra painting time that I hadn't expected, the unit below are the result.
    The Royal Guard are another unit from the base box set that haven't been used yet but I wanted to make sure were painted before they came up in the campaign. Naturally, I added the Royal Champion as it made sense to make sure their red's all matched properly. These guys were a pleasure to paint, I forgot how much fun robes can be to do.

Thanks for reading

Keeping the cause alive

++ Many Bothans died to bring you this post ++

   More Imperial Assault and another vague theme to justify why I have picked the models that I have painted at the same time, in this case rebel infiltrators. I decided to ignore the established colour schemes for both the two rebel saboteurs and the Bothan hero, instead tying them into my rebel rangers from a few months back. I am aiming to create a coherent looking generic task force that looks like it might be capable of doing the everyday missions that keep the cause alive, rather than what films are about, which follow rag-tag bands of heroes doing the big missions.
   So the saboteurs are in full ranger gear of camo and brown packs, while I gave the Bothan hero the camo trousers and brown details but a black body glove top to suggest a slightly more stealthy nature but also so he still stands out as a character.

Thanks for reading

Droids

   The last time we played Imperial Assault we played a mission that used the Assassin droid, and I was gutted that a model that was one of the main stars of that game was in his basic grey colour when every other model we used in that game was painted, so something had to be done about it.
   Keeping to a theme I painted the two more famous droids up at the same time, even though their colours didn't match at all, just as having a single model actively being painted at one time seems to be a bit of a waste unless you can paint to a higher level than I do. The biggest issue I found painting the 3 droids was that R2-D2's colour scheme seems to be different in every reiteration, he is different in 1-3, 4-6 and in all the bits in between, so I picked one picture online and went with it, hence the odd orange bits (which I think makes this an early version of him?).

Thanks for reading

Trandoshan hunters

   In Imperial Assault, the role of main generic mercenary falls to the race of Trandoshans, who by their very nature as a species of big game hunters, fulfil this role with glee. The core set comes with 4 basic ones split into 2 groups and one of the later waves includes the named Trandoshan, Bossk, who I picked up figuring I could make sure I got the skin tones to all match if I painted him at the same time.

   As before, I am mostly trying to paint up those models that are appearing more frequently, or having a starring role, in our campaign games. The heroes have fought these guys a couple of times now, so it made sense to get some paint on them.

Thanks for reading

Dead Man's Hand - Down Under!

   On Friday night I managed to get a game of Dead Man's Hand - Down Under in, using my Kelly gang and my wild west lawmen standing in as state police. We played the No Rest For The Wicked set of games just to see how the Kelly gang coped and we learned they are nothing like any other gang.

The Kangeroo proved, when questioned, that we were playing in Australia and not the US. Figure from Eureka Miniatures.

We used the same set-up for all 3 scenes just to keep it quick and flowing, making sure we left off the American looking cacti. My newly finished Bank is in the background.

From playing 3 scenes with my mate using the Kelly gang we learned a few key things; The Kelly gang are hard, ignoring instant kills is a big deal. The Kelly gang losing an action each time is also a massive deal, my state police were able to run rings around them, or as both sides were just using pistols, if I had a couple of guys holed up in a building I could afford to wait and let him move a Kelly member in, knowing that he would only have 1 shot left, while I could respond with 3 per guy that survived. 

Every scene became a bit of a slog for the state police, when you can be instantly killed by a good shot, but he can't, you have to be a bit more careful, plus if Ned is on the board, you know they won't be running away either.

The image below was shot after the Kelly gang member calmly walked into the building using both his moves. The state policeman (sheriff in this case), got 2 hits, 1 of which was a kill shot, as that was downgraded to a hit, the next round the Kelly member shot him twice and took him out of the game.

We still have 1 day left of this bank holiday, so there should be a painting post or two fairly soon.

Thanks for reading