40K...What is THAT?

...or maybe an alternate title could be: some pictures of some of the rules that Mike made up for me...

So, I had the chance to hang out with Mike and Serge last week and all that I knew was that there would be some gaming...and I didn't have to bring anything.  When I got to Mike's place, he had laid out a very nice looking table with appropriate scatter terrain...some really nice rocks and trees...suitable for any era of gaming...and on this table were a bunch of brightly coloured figures, for the most part they were brightly painted.

Outside of playing about 10 minutes of demo when Games Workshop still had their stores in Ottawa, my exposure to Warhammer...of any K...had been mostly limited to 'that other section' of the gaming store, "the evil empire", and/or some really great paintjobs of figs in a showcase...all in all, pretty limited.

I have seen individual figures repurposed for Frostgrave...they looked really cool, some great character to the sculpts...and I even have a box of Cadian's and a few snipers in my basement that I had bought because I saw someones force/warband/? done up as a battlegroup of Afghanistan mission Canadians, complete with scratchbuilt Lav's!! It was inspiring...

So, I really have no preconceptions...I have no expectations...and I have no previous frame of Warhammery reference (outside of Legends of the Old West)...I got to throw a LOT of dice; Mike had a great mix of old-school and new figures; the table looked great; it was an interesting multiplayer scenario...and I got to game.

Oh, if you'd like...here is Mike's version of events...

With that, I present the photos that I took as I learned...what the hell this 40K thing is...enjoy...

My initial setup...I think I have...human type forces...bottom blue group has long range weapons...above them are stealthy type troops with 2 damage eating drones...in the centre, I have my force commander and 5 rapid fire guys (i.e. SMG's...), and to their right, in red hats I have a gaggle of rifle toting grunts (I believe these were my weaker troops)...oh, I also had some heavy duty mech looking types in drop orbit...

 

Serge setup near the centre...he also ended up keeping some troops in orbit, ready to drop at a moments notice...Mike setup his Marines to my left behind a copse of pines, and I think he had troops in orbit as well...

 

Serge drops one of his units behind my right flank...they are close combat stars...

Serge takes my red team down a notch or two...

at the beginning of my turn, I drop my Mech's and their damage eating drones in behind Serge's main force...

weird angle...I move my stealthy's over behind the rock formation...move my range guys a little behind them on the edge.

I put some hurt downrange...my red team fires, my SMG's fire, and my Mech's unleash hell...

Mike drops some Marines on the centre objective...we are all trying to occupy within 6" of the centre, whoever has the most troops at end of turn receives a point...most points by end of turn 5 or 6 wins...Mike also deployed more troops to his left flank to deal with another dropped unit of Serge's.

 

Mike unleashes some battlePigs on my stealthy's and I put some hurt on a 4man team, leaving 2...but I think they healed because of his hardcore medic...

 

My forces initially focus on hurting Serge's mainforce...however once Mike's troops dropped, we kind of tried to get to the centre without causing too much mutual pain...

Again, the battlepigs...

My stealthy's were actually doing a pretty good job of defending from these melee monsters...the medic in his other team is doing a bang-up job and is saving troops...

Mike's commissar goes all badass on one of Serge's units...

 

Re-jig of the battle lines...I fallback with the stealthy's...push with the Mech's...move to link with the Mech's with my SMG's

Serge pushes between my two elements trying to get closer to Mike's pigs...

Serge takes the fight to the centre...knocks out the Marines that were collecting points...and then gets bounced by battlepigs...

I push my Mech's in...unfortunately my angle of attack is a little frigged so I have to attack Serge first...

The endstate...somewhat of a melee stalemate in the centre...Mike has collected 3 points and we have 1 turn to go...no way to overtake him at this point...

Fun game though...

A Couple of Troopers

Hello everyone,

Just a quick post...as I continue to paint through my Imperial Assault figures, I finished off the 'straight' troopers for a section of Stormtroopers.  The idea I'm working with is 1 x unit leader (orange pauldron), 5 x regular troops (no pauldrons), and 2 x heavy troopers...this of course is a very loose take on the organization of a Stormtrooper platoon, etc.

I recently finished the bulk of my first section, here, and wanted to have a means of differentiating between the sections...so I thought the easiest way was to paint the bases differently.  For the first section, I used Citadel's Agrellan Earth to give the mudflat look...for the second section I thought I'd paint the base in desert yellow and then a top coat of Stirland Mud while leaving some 'blank' spots to allow the desert yellow to pop through.  After that I applied some Citadel 'Ardcoat to the yellow pools to make them pop.

I very much enjoy the Imperial Assault figures and am still having a really great time painting them up...

Enjoy the pics...

 

 

Painting so far in 2017:

 

Painted:

28mm - 55
15mm - 5

Bought:
28mm - 53
vehicle - 1

15mm - 0
vehicle - 7

Overall PROGRESS: -1

 

Knights of the Crescent Moon

Howdy folks,

Never underestimate the ability for home reno's and work to get in the way of blogging momentum!! Now, it could always be worse, but as we approach the final stretch of the month, I am trying to push forward with momentum and some good posts...

Everytime I go through North Bay, I try to make an effort to drop by North Bay Hobbies and spend a little there to try to support the small business folks in our hobby.  This one time, a few years back, I dropped by and bought a flurry of Artizan miniatures. 

I have finally gotten around to putting paint to metal on this great looking pack of the "Knights of the Cresent Moon"...for me, visualizing these figures was heavily influenced by this character:

 Kevork Malikyan as Kazim, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

 

The pack was fairly quick to paint up and includes 3 focused individuals fighting to protect the Holy Grail from adventurers and riff-raff alike.

 

Enjoy the pics.

 

Always looking stylish with colour and highly shined shoes...these gents are ready for anything...

 

I think every movie I've seen has at least one person wearing a tan suit in the desert...going with that, I thought this was a very appropriate colour to choose...I initially went with desert yellow with green ochre highlights with green ochre/Iraqi sand as the final highlight.

 

Initially I had thought of painting the Tommy gunner up exactly like Kazim...but...I did doubt my ability to nail the pin striping...so I went with a safe black suit for this guy.

 

Painting so far in 2017:

 

Painted:

28mm - 53
15mm - 5

Bought:
28mm - 53
vehicle - 1

15mm - 0
vehicle - 7

Overall PROGRESS: -3

Imperial Assault - STORMTROOPERS!!!

Howdy folks,

Keeping with my new found momentum, I thought I'd post my latest progress with my Imperial Assault painting project.  I most recently finished up Agent Blaise as part of my Rogue Stars mercenary crew...and so I thought I'd try my hand at more Stormtroopers.

I took a few from the core box and also one or two from the Stormtroopers Villains Pack and have a mixed pose section of troops.  I like the poses that are currently available...and I'm sure as any gamer/painter, it would really be great to see a few more, but hey, it could always be worse.

My intent is to have these figures painted up for Imperial Assault, and then to also organize them into some section/squad based organization...so along the way, I ended up deciding on a basing scheme and went back and repainted the base for Kayn Somos...the first batch of Stromies will follow this basing...and then in the future when I've completed more of the core set, I will buy the expansion box that has the Heavy Troopers and split them amongst 2 sections...and for easing my brain, I plan on having a different basing scheme for each squad...

Of course, in the future I could definitely see spinning these figures into a Tomorrows War or Rogue Stars setting.

So with that, here are the pics.

Cheers.

The first section...you can see leader Kayn Somos on the left, base painted up using Vallejo's Desert Yellow as the base undercoat and then using Citadel's Agrellan Earth on the top to get the mudflat look...in my head it gives me the impression of being on Tattooine...you know, pretty much the ass end of the universe.

Trying a different angle and a flash...random piece of terrain in the background that I'm working on... 

Attempt without a flash...getting used to my phone's camera... 

Overhead shot of the different poses...some blaster damage on the helmet... 

Overhead of the section in action... 

Close up shots... 

Painting so far in 2017:

Painted:

28mm - 50
15mm - 5

Bought:
28mm - 53
vehicle - 1

15mm - 0
vehicle - 7

Overall PROGRESS: -6

Northern City Terrain and Golem

Hello folks,

I've had pretty good momentum with my posts at the end of last month...largely thanks due to Cangames, but, local convention notwithstanding I hope to keep some of that momentum going into June.

Over the past couple of months, I've had a couple of small terrain pieces on my side table just to putter at from time to time...nothing focused, but a couple of bits thrown together and then take my time getting the paint on them...make sure I like the looks, etc.

If I recall correctly, sometime around February I found a couple of interesting cardboard packing bits down in the recycling...they look fairly solid, they had a nice shape to them...and given that I had binge watched Game of Thrones over the Christmas holiday, I thought that these packing pieces could make some nice ice walls for Frostgrave and the Northern City.

I added some styro where there was a gap...I didn't want to have to cut everything down further...and I thought on the table the styro would help it look like the walls literally sprung up from the rock...that was the thought at least, lol...

the smaller piece in the middle was a 'flappy' extension of the cardboard and I thought it could make a handy perch or spawn point for some particular piece of no good...I intentionally painted these smaller perches up without the 'ice' blue tones...

A different view of the perches and you can really see how the tone between the pieces compares.

 

Now the best test of any terrain piece...putting a figure against it to see how the effect goes.  I recently finished a Reaper 'Stone Golem' figure...I was initially at odds as to how to paint this one up...whether to go stone heavy or dirt/mud heavy...in the end I chose to follow how I envision the Northern City and I went with a much more stone like appearance.

I just changed up my phone over the past month and I've really been trying to get proficient at using the camera it came with...I tried a few pics with the flash...this one I wanted to get a good view of the figure over all with the ice wall behind him.  When I went with the stone look...I based in black and then Vallejo German Grey...then I thought I'd use more of a wet brush to make the colours pop more... 

I painted VJ stone grey over the figure and then hit it with a heavy dark wash and went from there...VJ black grey, and then several tones down with that cut with stone grey and some off white.  I chose to go camouflage green with the headpiece and 'skirt' to really show off some contrast on the figure... 

Looking at various stoneworks online and a few pieces around the house, I then emphasised specific areas of the figure...I finished the green first...those areas were the easiest to paint up for me and really took the paint well...the stone tones took me more time but I really like how they turned out.

 

As always, I hope you enjoy the pics...take care and we will blog you later.

 

Painting so far in 2017:

 

Painted:
28mm - 45
15mm - 5

Bought:
28mm - 53
vehicle - 1

15mm - 0
vehicle - 6

Overall PROGRESS: -10