Hobby Sunday 27/09/15- Drop pod, terrain and objective markers

This week I have been doing some work on my White Scars, terrain and some objective markers.

 

I signed up to attend Rapid Fire 2015, a tournament held by Striling Wargamers club. I have decided to take my White Scars to the event and have been toying around with an army list for it. In order to use this list I need to get my second drop pod completed, as well as a librarian.

 

I had already started on the drop pod previously and it only took me an evening to get it the painting finished off. This consisted of giving it a drybrush with Leadbelcher and then painting on the red markings on the doors of the pod. I only have to apply the transfers and it will be complete.

Nostalgia Trip- 40k Card Terrain Showcase

Today, I wanted to highlight some of the old 40k card buildings that I have been collecting over the past few years. I think that these are still interesting pieces that add a lot to the battlefield and give you some interesting terrain to fight over.

 

GW has long since evolved from selling printed cardboard terrain, put together with the ubiquitous, long serving plastic bulkhead. They now produce some fantastic highly-detailed plastic terrain that is easy to assemble and paint (if you have the time or the money). I love their terrain kits, the bastion is a great model and I have visions of building massive structures featuring dozens of kits, if only I had that much cash lying around. However, there is still something about the old card kits that I still love.

Every gamer should have a few of these bad boys lying around.

Medusa IV Campaign- Turn 1, Battle Phase 1 results and Battle Phase 2 Moves

The first battle phase of the campaign has come to an end. The players got their first games played and the results are in. The map now looks like this after the first battle phase:

Battle Report 20- 1850 pts Ravenwing vs Astra Militarum Armoured Company

This week's battle report was another for the Medusa IV campaign that I am currently running. The battle was 1850 pts of my Ravenwing vs Andrew's Astra Militarum Armoured Company.

 

My army was a slightly modified version of my proposed Blog Wars army. I dropped the Librarian and added an Interrogator-Chaplain with the Mace of Redemption. I also dropped the Dark Talon and took another bike squad armed with a flamer. This was unintentional, I thought we were playing 1500 pts so I never took my proxy Dark Talon (I am currently attempting to build and magnetize this) and had to make up the points with a spare bike squad that I had in my case.

The army consists of:

 

RAVENWING STRIKE FORCE

Sammael- Corvex (S)

Interrogator-Chaplain- Space Marine Bike, Meltabombs, Mace of Redemption (IC)

5 Ravenwing Command Squad- Grenade Launcher, Champion, Apothecary, Ravenwing Standard (CS)

6 Black Knights- Grenade Launcher (BK)

5 Ravenwing Bikers- 2 Grav guns, sergeant with meltabombs (RB1)

5 Ravenwing Bikers- 2 Plasma guns, sergeant with meltabombs (RB2)

5 Ravenwing Bikers- 2 Meltaguns, sergeant with meltabombs (RB3)
5 Ravenwing Bikers- Flamer, sergeant with meltabombs (RB4)

Ravenwing Landspeeder- Multimelta, Typhoon Missile launcher (RL)

 

RAVENWING SUPPORT SQUADRON

Darkshroud- Assault Cannon

3 Ravenwing Landspeeders- Heavy Bolters, Assault Cannons (RSS)

Medusa IV Campaign- Turn 1, phase 1 battle overviews

Welcome to the first battle overview post in the ongoing Medusa IV campaign. Some of the players in the campaign have been kind enough to send me photos of their games and a quick overview of the action taking place in their battle for their territories.

Sons of Hous vs Eldar
 First up, Josh's Sons of Horus, led by Loken, took on Armel's Saim Hann Eldar in a battle over a ruined cityscape. The two armies sized one another up and made advances into the ruins.

GW Aberdeen Double Tournament- Armies on Display

While at the Clan Clash doubles tournament at GW Aberdeen, I got the chance to take photos of some of their amazing gaming tables that we were playing on, as well as photos of some of the armies being used on the day and in the cabinets at the store.

 

Gaming Tables

GW Aberdeen Doubles Tournament- Game 3 and Final Thoughts

Our third and final game of the Clan Clash doubles tournament was against Aberdeen once again.

 

This scenario was called Line of March, a mixture of Maelstrom and objective grabbing. The objectives were set up in set positions around the board (two on each short side and two in the middle). Each turn, players would draw 3 secret maelstrom cards and have to complete them. At the end of the game, additional points would be awarded for controlling the objectives as well as additional points for table control and destroying enemy units in the final turn of the game.

 

I was paired up with Chris (from the Aberdeen store) and his Tau for this mission. As a reminder, my army consisted of:

Captain- Space Marine Bike, Power fist, Storm Shield

5 Bikers- 2 Grav guns, sergeant with Meltabombs

5 Bikers- 2 Grav guns, sergeant with Meltabombs

5 Bikers- 2 Meltaguns, sergeant with Meltabombs

5 Sternguard Veterans- 3 with combi-meltas in drop pod

Chris' Tau army consisted of:
Commander Farsight and two crisis suits with drones
Two units of Fire Warriors
A unit of Sniper Drones
Riptide

We were up against Craig and his Space Marines (who I faced in the first game) and Ricky with his Necrons. The army consisted of:

Librarian
3 Grav centurions in drop pod
10 Tactical marines- meltagun with drop pod
10 Tactical marines- meltagun with drop pod

Necron Lord
Two units of Necron Warriors
6 Wraiths
Night Scythe

A tough army to face. I knew from experience in the first game that the Centurions were going to be deadly and Necrons are always a tough proposition. Unfortunately, my Tau allies had no interceptor  to try and take out the pods before they could cause much damage.

GW Aberdeen Doubles Tournament- Game 2

This is part 2 of my battle reports at Clan Clash, organised by Games Workshop Aberdeen.

 

Our second game of the day was a mission called Cataclysm. This was a really interesting mission, the goal of which was to get units in your opponent's table half. Each unit of Troops or Elites above 5 models in your opponent's deployment zone at the end of your turn after turn 2 scored you a victory point. In addition, any units of Troops or their dedicated transport that is destroyed get to come back into reserve the following turn.

This sounded like a fantastic mission to play and one very suited to my army. I liked the meatgrinder aspect, meaning that you could throw your Troops units into the enemy army without caring for their demise, as long as they scored you victory points.

The battle begins.

The scenario.

GW Aberdeen Doubles Tournament- Introduction and Game 1

I recently attended Clan Clash, a 40k doubles tournament ran by Games Workshop in Aberdeen. I was joined by Colin and Scott to represent GW Dundee (along with Chris from GW Aberdeen who would join us to make up the team). Our armies were to be 750 pts using the Allies force organisation chart and I would play with each of our team members over three custom designed scenarios made by the guys over at GW Aberdeen.

I had never visited the Games Workshop in Aberdeen before, but the store is amazing. It features an upstairs gaming space with room for about a dozen 6x4 tables and some amazing boards and scenery (photos to follow in a future post). The walls of the gaming room are covered with a huge array of artwork and some brilliant full length standards, copies of some iconic banners from the 40k universe.

The Aberdeen store had held qualifiers for Clan Clash the week before, so only the cream of the crop would be competing at the tournament. Dundee had their own stringent criteria for attending the tournament, namely "Are you available?" and "Do you want to go?".

 

For my army I took the White Scars, consisting of:

Captain- Space Marine Bike, Power fist, Storm Shield

5 Bikers- 2 Grav guns, sergeant with Meltabombs

5 Bikers- 2 Grav guns, sergeant with Meltabombs

5 Bikers- 2 Meltaguns, sergeant with Meltabombs

5 Sternguard Veterans- 3 with combi-meltas in drop pod

 

I thought that this would give me a lot of mobility for seizing objectives and for maelstrom missions, as well as providing a decent amount of firepower.

Hobby Sunday 13/09/15- Ravenwing, Refinery and Trees

For this week's hobby time, I have been working on some terrain and my Ravenwing.

 

I finally decided to fix Sammael's sword arm this week. The Finecast sword kept snapping off and I couldn't affix it properly to the hilt. In order to sort this, I cut off the current arm at the wrist and pinned a new plastic one in to place for a more secure hold. I then painted the new one as shown below and highlighted to match the rest of the model.