Screech's Last-minute 40K Extravaganza!

Silly Lion, the Murder Sword is a Chaos artifact! 

Today was Screech's Last Minute-40K Extravaganza! This event is Screech's last gaming weekend until he returns from Basic Training. Yup, Screech is going to go get his own real-life "Imperial Guardsman Uplifting Primer", standard uniform, a love of mess-hall food, shoe polish kit, and basically live through the fun parts of the old Sgt Benjamin TV show. :)

We started many hours earlier than usual (sorry indoor RC people) at the local Hobbytown, and waged war. I didn't battle Screech but I did get to watch some of his two games, which I'll talk about at the end of this post.

Instead I finally had the privilege to play against Kushial's Lions of Harlech Space Marine Chapter. The last time we hit the table together was as allies with my Space Wolves, but on this day they would be foes of my Ultramarines as they Crusaded against each other over a bunch of Mysterious Objectives!

The Ultramarines army, pre-deployment

The Lions of Harlech, pre-deployment. 

 Kushial uses the Imperial Fist Combat Tactics, as I guess the Lions are an Imperial Fist successor Chapter according to his home-brewed background (which, if this is written somewhere I would like to read it and link up for share with anyone reading this blog).

Ultramarine deployment

TURN ONE
The Ultramarines deploy first, taking advantage of any cover I could just in case the Lions stole the initiative . In particular I claimed the dilapidated bastion in the center of my Deployement Zone by placing a Devestator Squad on top of it.

The Lions of Harlech deployment

The Lions did like-wise, not anticipating stealing the initiative. They were wise to do so, as the Ultramarines would indeed go first!

1st turn maneuvers 

 The 1st turn was largely uneventful, I managed to kill a singe marine with a lucky hit and put a glancing hit on the Harlech Predator. This would begin an annoying series of events where I would hit with every heavy weapon I had but only roll a 1 for both damage and armor penetration! This strange luck will last much of the game! On the Lions first turn he didn't fair much better but he did get a glancing hit on both my Whirlwind and Venerable Dreadnought with his two Attack Bikes!  Also he a Drop Pod descend and unload an angry Iron Clad Dreadnought which made a path straight to the dilapidated bastion!

TURN 2

The Tac Marines attempt to stop the Iron Clad!

 I declared the Tactical Doctrine for this round. Yes, those Combat Doctrines tokens I made sure proved to be a good idea! I managed to go the whole game without forgetting them! This squad was able to take two Hull Points off of the Iron Clad Dreadnought thanks in part to this doctrine. Also in the enemy deployment zone I unloaded the Sternguard who unleashed a fury of Hellfire blasts intothe Lion Tactical squad killing about a quarter of them. My other tactical squad claimed a bunker which would allow them to also secure an objective. My Venerable Dreadnought would jump out to stare-down the enemy Attack Bike, putting a wound on it but failing to charge it!

The field after the end of Ultramarine Turn 2

 Kushials 2nd turn was more fruitful as well, as his dread pulverized the bastion, killing all but one of the devastators on top of it!

"Whoa! Dude, where's my bastion?" 

 You'll also note in the background that the Sternquard are no longer in front of the Ultramarine Land Raider, they took enough losses to force a route test which they failed, causing them to run behind the Land Raider!

One of the Attack Bikes would attempt to gun for the Venerable Dreadnought's rear armor, only to fail to hit it! Meanwhile the Landraider would come storming at the Dread with guns blazing!

"We have you now!....ok. maybe not..."

TURN 3

I started off by declaring the Assault Doctrine.

Next, I decide to do something nuts, mainly because I just wanted to see it happen and shooting the damned thing just wasn't killing it, so I attempted to ram the Predator, full steam ahead a full 12"! And, as is typically the case, even with an effective Strength 8 hit, I rolled a pen roll of 12, missing the front armor by a point! Still, it looked cool and it was fun forcing his warlord (who detached from the unit) and his tac squad to move out of it's way!

"CLANG!" (waiting for the Arbites to show up to take down the accident report was quite awkward)

My Terminators, along with the Librarian, showed up, managing to take another hull point from the Predator!

For the record, they scattered there!

 The Tactical Combat Squad in the woods killed the other attack bike! By the way, in case you hadn't noticed, this would finally be First Blood for this game!

First blood, and the squad that caused it!

I would declare three assaults this round, the first being the V. Dread against the other Attack Bike, which was a very quick kill, as the dread tore apart the Attack bike with ease!  The other charge was against the Iron Clad dread, which proved to be both fruitless and crazy, as I lost the assault, but the Vet. Sgt, and his remaining charge rolled double "1's" on their route test. Insane courage indeed!

"We will kill you!!!"

My Sternguard would themncharge the Lion's Warlord, only to lose two guys, route, and wait for the Warlord to next charge them!

Notice how his sword hads'nurgle-esque' vibe about it? 

 Which of course he did on Kushials next turn, killing two more Sternguard, however they did manage to finally get a shot through that accursed artificer armor on a snapfire! This time the Sternguard would not run.

Wishing that they had ran away, the two tac marines fighting the Iron Clad are pulled apart like a pork sandwich being eaten by a 2 year old! It was sick!

"Where was I, Oh, yeah, I was going to kill YOU!"

Kushial sent forth his Sternguard from his Land Raider and they cut down most of the Tactical Squad in the woods, but I had two survivors left from that onslaught!

TURN 4

Combat was finally committed! And the death toll was starting to rise! I, for the hope of my lonely Devastator, would declare the Devastator Doctrine!

The Land Raider would finally destroy the Predator in a massive explosion!

Death to the Predator

The Machine Spirit would guide the Heavy Bolters to attack the Devastator Squad in the ruins killing two of them, and my Terminator Squad would move up and finish off the Squad! All-in-all, that was in incredibly successful combination, one that I my dice will rarely ever allow me to pull off!

Death to the Devastators! (and the failed armor saves that caused it!

The Venerable Dread would charge the Lion's Sternguard, killing a bunch, but they refused to route!

 On the Lion's turn, the Lions' Tactical Squad that you can see in the cratered woods, had been taking hits from the Whirlwind for most of the game, and were even pinned on turn three! Now the spot the Terminators and decided to attack them, and they manage to kill one!

Now the Iron Clad is just thirsting for my Devastator's blood, and he charges! I snapfire and hit, only to miss the necessary glancing hit result that would've felled this massive murder-machine!

Yeah, this guy died.

 TURN 5

The Terminators shoot up, charge, and wipe-out the  tactical squad in the woods. Apparently that was only event worth documenting in that round for my turn anyway, although my land raider would re position to get a better line of fire on the tactical squad that was watching Lion's Captain dispatch the rest of my Sternguard.

"Look boss, another fight to join!"

 On Kushial's turn, the Iron Clad moved toward the bunker which housed my remaining Tactical Combat Squad who was holding in objective. The Land Raider was barreling down my my Whirlwind, and picking off the remaining Tactical Squad in the woods, in fact, there just one guy left (the missile launcher trooper!),

Finally on his assault Phase, the Lions took down the Venerable Dread!

"Haha! Look, he's fallen and can't get up!" -Last words of the traitorous Lion's of Harlech Sternguard

 Kushial rolled the dice to see if the game ended. It was VERY close at this point, as attrition was wearing us down on both sides. The dice spoke, and the game would go on!

TURN 6

Finally standing still, the Lander Raider annihilates the Warlord and the Tactical Squad! The Objective is now free!

Imagine lots of red vapor all around that objective marker

 The Librarian and the surviving Terminators would kill off the rest of the Sternguard, consolidating toward the Lion's Land Raider...

"What do you say lads, think we can take out that Land Raider?"

On Kushial's turn, the Iron Clad, in a desperate move to deny me the objective at the bunker, charges it and destroys it, killing everyone inside but the Veteran Sgt! (Just a side note: this is a bunker made from the template found in the Warhammer 40,000 4th edition hardcover)

Iron Clad doing what an Iron Clad was made to do! Destroying buildings! And loving it!!!

The Land Raider finally wrecks the Whirlwind, while the sole survivor of the Tac squad dives and ducks within the cover of the trees! 

And the game ends!
Ultramarines 6vps (First Blood, Warlord, Linebreaker, and Objective)
Lions of Harlech 1vp. (Linebreaker)

My MVP unit: First Blood and the Objective, earning 4 points!

 It was a fun game, like most fun games, it wasn't obvious who was going to win until the final round as it was very close. Kushial and I had very few models left, and he only had three vehicles left (Land Raider, a Drop Pod, and the Iron Clad). Another round, and It's not likely that either of my lone Tac Marines would've survived!

Over on the other tables:

Screech vs. Murl

Screech, proving the internet wrong by winning against Murl's hard-to-beat Nurgle army! It was a fun game to watch the end of.

Nurgle vs. Tryanids

 A big battle broke on the table that Kushial and I played our game on! Indeed, they hardly moved the scenery much! Scott, Skylar, The Bob, and Hiveangel were having a two-on-two battle royale! You can read the battle report here.

Deployment of the big battle!

Blood Angels opening shots!

Some of the new players (sorry i don't recall your names!) had a Dark Angel vs. a Dark Eldar/Eldar force. I believe the Eldar won.

The hunters hunted!

And finally, just as I was leaving, the 2nd turn was starting on a game between Screech's 'Nids and the Tau and Inqusition force of Amy and the Da Masta Cheef, which hopefully he'll discuss on his blog this week.

C'mon! Space Truck'n! 

It was good day at Hobbytown, with a good turn out and a lot of games being played! I hope this was a good send off for you Screech, I know we'll await your return!

I'm curious to know the results of all of the other games, so if the other players could leave those results in the comments, for posterity sake, that would be grand!

Combat Doctrine Tokens

Last week was my first game using the new Codex: Space Marines with my Ultramarines. The list was my standard one (2 Tactical Squads, V. Dread, Sternguard, Devs, Whirlwind and a Land Raider), as I don't have a lot of exotic options for running them. The few new rules were easy enough to keep up with for the most part. Amy and Da Masta Cheef were eager to see their Tau (with a light Eldar support) sup upon more Ultramarine meat, so challenged me upon arriving at the store. Fair enough, the last time I played the Ultramarines was against them and that was with the previous codex, so I was curious to see if the subtle differences would net different results.

Ultramarine deployment.

The game was fun despite our dice begging to be slung-shot out into Boone Lake, and the Ultramarines nearly had a victory, however my dice screwed me on two separate charges. It was the top of turn 5, I was going first and declared that I was using the Assault Combat Doctrine. This was the last of my 3 doctrines, the Tactical one I thought worked well, and the Devastator one simply had no opportunity to perform. At this point the Taudar had 1 VP for offing my suicidal Warlord (it was an awesome death), and that I think about the Stealthsuits were giving them Linebreaker for a total of 2vps, and I was leading by 4 vps (ist Blood and an Objective). After some awesome jet-packing moves the Tau Stealthsuits were now close to the objective in my deployment zone and had to be dealt with. I shot them up pretty good, and charged! I then lost 2 guys to snapfire! Ouch! Then I rolled a 2 for my charge distance! The guys that died were close enough and would have closed that gap had they not died for the Greater Good (so the Cheef's propaganda would have be believe!).

"This is ours Ultramarines! Thanks for watching it for us, awfully cool of you..."

I had few marines left on the other side of the battlefield debris from those two drones that you can see in that pic who also botched their charge roll. Cursing the dice gods, we moved on, the Stealthsuits jumped on top of the Objective, giving the the Tau a 5-1 victory!

It was a good, game and afterwards while talking to the other players, Mac, the other resident Ultramarine player, asked me "How did those Combat Doctrines work for you?" That's when it dawned on me! I had forgotten about the Assault Combat Doctrines! LOL. Right there on the spot I realized what I needed: tokens! Something physical I can keep in my hand or on the table that I can touch and see to remind myself that I have this rule! You got to figure that I have been playing this army off and on, since about 1991 and have never had anything like this that I had to recall in a game. So I made these tokens that I think should remind me during the game that I have 3 one-use only special rules. To make them I used a simple round base, Ultramarine paint and some old decals and presto: Combat Doctrine Tokens!!!

Devastator, Tactical and Assault Ultramarine Combat Tactics: Combat Doctrines tokens. 

 We'll see if they work next time.

Oh, and to answer Mac's question: I will have to play a few more games (specifically ones where I remember to use them) before I can decide if I like these Combat Doctrines. I did like the Tactical one just fine however. :)

Wraithlord for Mark

Done painting! (pre-flocked).

Many eons ago, during Warhammer 40;000's Second Edition, my old pal Mark and I got crazy serious about 40K,  Often I would find time to paint some of his minis for him, usually because he didn't paint and I didn't have Eldar, and this was an excuse to try to paint a few models for him while at the same time try my hand with some experimentation in paint. We both really liked the Saim-Hann craftworld color scheme, so I started off painting elements of his army in those colors. Back in the '90s GWUS would run mail-order specials where they would sell off large quantities of blisterpacks for a low flat price. These would be random, you had no idea what you were going to get, and my friends and I would buy lots of these bundles and then sort out who got what. Often times we stuck with odd things, and over time I amassed a small collection of Eldar. I decided to start a small army, more to paint than to play with, and these too were painted in Saim-Hann colors. The idea would be that Mark could borrow these when we played if he likes and they would match his force. 

It was a noble idea anyway. 

Close-up on the gems.

I don't see him much anymore, as real-life has a way of putting us in our places so to say. And this may be why it has taken me over 10 years to finish painting his Wraithlord! The reds were completed fairly quickly and eventually I finished the bone color on his arms, but the under guns on the power fists sort of stuck me for a long time before deciding to paint them black. Well, I kind of just forgot about it, despite the fact that it has been a constant presence at the back of my painting table. There are many pics in this blog where it appears in the background! 

One of the reasons that I might have held on to it for so long is that I used to HATE painting gems stones, and over time I figured it out, and I think I finally nailed the technique with this model and I still look at it for reference. Also the 'star-cannon' was painted to resemble the star motif that I use on my High Elves. Also I own one of these models, which is still sitting in a box unassembled just biding it's time, that I had hoped to paint up and match the scheme with this one. But with a move likely in my near future, I just don't foresee getting to the Eldar anytime soon despite how tasty the new codex is. So I finished up those underarm guns and I hope to get this to Mark before his birthday in January (not likely, but perhaps it's the thought that counts?)

So here's some pics for the Neverness Archives, the overcast skies today sort of dull the intensity of the colors (yay winter) but these will do. I hope you enjoy these as much as Mark will having this thing beat-down on his opponents! 

Flocking done. The base belies the age of this thing.

"It's full of stars," 

Tromping around in the moss fields of Backyardistan IV. 

 Now to figure out when I'm going to get his two Bloodbowl teams painted that I have been sitting for just as long! :)

2013 in review

Hello 2014! Happy New Year!

This year I wanted to review what I think are some of the highlights of the past year as far as my personal hobby accomplishments are concerned, and make a projection of what I foresee 2014 will bring.

The Wolves return to Fenris 

A year ago today, I came back from a trip visiting my friends in Cincinnati (and waging war) to discover that The Bink had made a magnificent gaming table for me! It was an awesome Christmas present and we spent 2013 using it for Warhammer 40,000 games, as well as Roleplaying games (Dark Heresy and Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd 3ed) and board games (Battlemasters, Settlers of Cataan, etc.) and card games (Bang!, and another that I suck at...LOL). A year later and I still treasure this gift. Thanks again Bink!

Big table with shelves on the inside of the legs. 

By the end of January of 2013, I had acquired my brother's old Ultramarine army which are some of the earliest models that I ever painted (Circa 1990-ish). Getting them updated and into games of 6th Edition Warhammer 40K was quite a lot of fun and I ran them a few times in 2013 and usually had fun using tactics and options that my usual Space Wolves lack. I have yet to run them under the new Space Marines codex however, but aim to do so soon. Also, I am currently painting a "new" Captain model for this army, and figuring out a way to update the models in this army without resorting to completely redoing them.

Old Ultramarines!

 Last year I also ran a Tyranid army...well, genestealers really, and although it was a lot of fun I am now looking forward to the new codex which is supposed to be out this month before I do any additional work on this army. We'll see what the future holds for these guys. It was fun discovering how tasty Imperial Guard are though...

One gun and LOTS of claws.

 I finished painting a Long Fang squad that I am still very fond of. In fact I haven't left them out of a Space Wolf game yet. For Xmas the legendary Warfrog gave me a ton of the 2nd edition plug-and-play marines including 10 more missile launchers. My dreams of Long Fang spam are about to come true! Muhahahaha!)

I don't think that plasma pistol has been fired yet...

 2013 also saw the first Dark Angel paint-jobs by me in over a decade. These are the plug-and-play models that come in the current 40k paint set. I indeed to do more with these guys soon, as I recently doubled up on the Dark Angels from Dark Vengeance.

Dark Angels

A lot of my summer and early autumn was dedicated working on my Warhammer Fantasy Orcs, which are pretty much playable at this point, I just need to get them portable and arrange some games... This army still has a lot of work to do, but while I was painting these guys I was also dabbling on some 40K models, which inspired me to start playing Orks in 40k again. Funny how that works, huh?

Waaagh!

I turned in 40 in 2013. I concept I am still in denial of. I tell you, playing these games and engaging in this hobby really does help to keep one young! LOL I do have to say nothing makes for a more humbling outlook than having your brother watch as you use his old army in a birthday bloodbath against Tau-dar. Our ancestors were weeping...

40K on your 40th! What a great day! Thanks again to all for making it a special day for me! 

Another special event that coincided with my birthday was meeting my old friends from our High School days in England for a series of intense games of Space Hulk. That 3rd edition was such a great set and I honestly believe GW has made a critical error keeping this game "limited edition".

I kept the 'stealers well fed on that weekend, except when I played them that is! LOL

Getting my Space Wolf Land Raider completed Land Raider before the 2014 was a nice project for the Holidays. You can find the links for that whole massive project on my Space Wolves page.

"Let's raid some land!"

Another fun finish for 2013 was having people contact me to tell me that Frontline Gaming used one of my Cypher pics (see below) in their Cypher Reviewed article. This was quite a pleasant, and flattering, surprise. Also, it was a good review of the Cypher dataslate which I still have yet to download. I am totally intrigued by the notion of incorporating him into my Space Wolves, not to take advantage of any benefits or whatever, but just to antagonize my Dark Angel opponents. :)

Cypher offers you his protection.

 So what does 2014 have in store for Neverness and his Chronicles? Well, in the next few months I will most likely be moving in with my girlfriend, and until we get my studio built, I will be hurting for space. So in the meanwhile, I will be cramming away on completing some projects as well as figuring out how to make my armies both portable, protected.and accessible. I don't foresee many 'construction' projects in this time, but I do foresee that individual models or units might be painted up. We shall see.

One project that I started on in December was work on my Chaos army, in particular my World Eaters. Only one model do I have finished (see below) which was painted many years ago and he is the standard that I hope to get these models up to. He's painted in a 2nd edition Chaos Codex Khorne Berserkers scheme, but I am OK with this as it has always appealed to me. Not sure how much progress will me made on this force in the New Year, but I would like to get Chaos up to a strong secondary, if not Primary, army.

World Eater.

I would also like to try to knock out some of the models that others have asked for me to paint for them, mainly so they don't get stored for heaven-knows-how-long during this move/transition. I hope to have a very productive January on both the model mini painting front as well as on my 2-D art, but I suspect it will also be a very busy month for me at work as well, so we shall see!

Meanwhile, I wish you all a Happy New Year, and thanks for your continued patronage of this blog!

-Joel (Neverness)