Inspirational Terrain

With a break in painting my models, I have decided to take a look at making some more terrain. I have a long list of projects that I wish to do; some are repairs to existing pieces, some are new projects that I have had in mind for a while. I got to thinking about where I go to for ideas for the projects that I plan. Below are some of the places that I look for inspiration:

 

1. White Dwarf and GW

As I have said previously, I get a lot of my inspiration for terrain and painting from old issues of White Dwarf and GW webpages. When I am thinking of new terrain projects, I frequently flick through old issues of White Dwarf to see what I can come up with.

This article gave me the idea for building some recent ruins.

Hobby Sunday 09/08/15

This week, I decided to take a break from painting and make up some terrain that I had lying around. In a previous hobby Sunday, I had finished construction of an Imperial chapel using the GW cities of death buildings.

 

I had a lot of spare parts and additional building lying around, so I thought that I would do something with them. I combed through some old issues of White Dwarf and Codex Cities of Death for inspiration and found some pieces that I wanted to try and emulate (I also put aside some old White Dwarf copies for inspiration for other terrain pieces I want to work on).

 

I set to work trying to copy the smaller section. I think it turned out pretty well, but I still have a lot of rubble and detail to add. I drew a guideline base out of 3 mm MDF which I will need to cut at a later date.

Battle Report 15- 1500 pts Dark Angels Ravenwing vs Mechanium

This week, I had arranged a game against Steve's 30k mechanium army. We had agreed to play 1500 pts on a 6x4 board using a maelstrom mission. As I have talked about previously, I am a big fan of maelstrom missions and I was happy to get another game in.

I continued my forays into the new Dark Angels codex and decided to yet again field a Ravenwing army. My army consisted of:

 

RAVENWING STRIKE FORCE

Interrogator-Chaplain- Crozius Arcanum, Rosarius, Bike, Mace of Redemption, Meltabombs (IC)

Librarian- Level 2 psyker, Bike, Conversion Field, Meltabombs (L)

5 Ravenwing Command- Champion, Apothecary, Ravenwing Standard (CS)

5 Black Knights- Huntsman has Meltabombs (BK)

5 Ravenwing Bikers- 2 Grav guns, sergeant has Meltabombs (RB1)

5 Ravenwing Bikers- 2 Meltaguns, sergeant has Meltabombs (RB2)

5 Ravenwing Bikers- 2 Plasmaguns, sergeant has Meltabombs (RB3)

Darkshroud- Assault Cannon (D)

Landspeeder- Heavy Bolter, Assault Cannon (RL1)

Landspeeder- Heavy Bolter, Assault Cannon (RL2)

I wanted to try the Interrogator Chaplain in this game and he took to the field as my warlord. I think his Zealot ability will give a big boost to the Command squad and make them more effective in combat. I gave him the Mace of Redemption for the strength increase and AP3. I have never played mechanium, but had heard that some units can have high toughness, so hoped this would be a nice counter. I rounded out the HQ choices with a Librarian, I am still wanting to try the Dark Angels Interromancy powers to see if I can use them effectively. He was given a conversion field to boost his survivability and will be deployed with the Black Knights.

I took three units of Ravenwing bikers armed with grav guns, meltaguns and Plasmaguns for some variety to take on whatever I may come up against. I rounded out the list with three Landspeeders; the ever useful Darkshroud and two ravenwing landspeeders with heavy bolters and assault cannons.

 

I had a lot of manoeuvrability, which should help with objective seizing and had a fair amount of firepower and combat potential to deal with the enemy.  

My warlord trait was The Hunt; potentially useful, but not great. The Librarian got Mind Worm, Righteous Repugnance and Maelstrom of Misery. Giving a unit such as the Black Knights rage will always be effective and I had not yet tried Maelstrom of Misery, but it should be powerful against any high toughness Mechanium units.

Fondest memories in gaming

I was putting the finishing touches to my latest battle report (due to be posted on Thursday) and was thinking about how much I enjoyed the game, which got me thinking about all the unforgettable moments that I have had in gaming over the years. I started to reminisce about some stand out memories over my gaming years and thought I would share a few today.

 

1. Invulnerable Terminators

Many, many moons ago, my gaming was carried out at GW Braehead. I would venture there most Thursdays to do battle on their amazing boards with my Dark Angels (my only army at the time). This battle took place immediately after Terminators had just received a 5+ invulnerable save (thanks to Chapter Approved from White Dwarf) and I took my only unit of Deathwing to the table that week to try it out. We were playing on a city board, featuring a river in the middle of the table and a narrow bridge over it.

On one of my opponent's turns, my Deathwing were on the bridge, leading the charge against the enemy. My opponent's Chaos Space Marines fired every weapon in the army at the Terminators; bolters, Lascannons, Missile launchers and more. Yet my Deathwing emerged from the barrage completely unschathed. I made every armour save and invulnerable save that I had to make and the Terminators were able to turn the tide of the battle.

 

Another stand out moment for my Terminators was in a recent battle report against Ross' Orks, where my Deathwing took the brunt of a 60-strong Ork mob charge without a single terminator falling. Eighteen wounds and not a single failed save! This was one of the turning points in the game. I didn't go on to win, but it softened my loss significantly.

Hobby Cost July 2015

Hi everyone, as part of my ongoing look at my hobby costs each month, here are July's figures:

• -£15.30 Sold Razorback (ebay)
• -£11.30 Sold Scouts (ebay)
• -£33.30 Sold End Times Archaon (ebay)
• £8.40 ebay postage costs
• £20.00 Dundee wargames yearly membership
• £13.30 Chaplain on Bike (ebay)
• £3.35 Bike bases (ebay)
• £11.80 Landspeeder (ebay)
• £40.30 Four Landspeeders (ebay)
• £19.81 ebay charges
• -£5.00 Sold combi-meltas (ebay)
• -£3.00 Sold Dark Angels Reliquery (ebay)
• -£4.00 Sold Ravenwing Corvus Hammers (ebay)
• -£4.00 Sold Dark Angels power swords (ebay)
• -£14.80 Sold Bastion (ebay)
• -£2.99 Sold Techmarine torso (ebay)
• -£8.15 Sold Landspeeder Storm (ebay)
• -£2.99 Sold Dante incomplete (ebay)
• -£6.00 Sold Combi-Grav guns (ebay)
• -£5.00 Sold Combi-flamer guns (ebay)
• -£5.00 Sold Combi-plasma guns (ebay)
• £15.84 Ebay postage costs

Total for July- £11.97

 

Wargames Trenches

There is something iconic about the image of rank after rank of Imperial Guard (Astra Militarum to our younger readers) fighting the enemy from a large trench network. After reading the fantastic "Straight Silver" Gaunt's Ghosts novel, I was inspired to create a trench network for my own guard army to fight over and defend.

 

The idea was to create a modular trench network, made up of 1 foot square sections. This would help both with storage and with variety, as I could re-arrange the battlefield to save me fighting over the same layout over and over. I decided to make eight sections, as this would allow me to deploy the trenches in a 6' x 1' arrangement for a long board edge or in a 4' x 2' arrangement for short board edge fighting.

The complete trench network.

Age of Sigmar- Battle Report and First Impressions

I know, I know, I'm a little late to the party with the Age of Sigmar, I've just been enjoying the new Space Marine and Dark Angels codex too much to get in to it. I finally got round to playing my first game of Age of Sigmar at the club last week against Matt's Orcs and Goblins.

 

My army consisted of:

Vampire Lord

Necromancer

9 Black Knights

3 Crypt Horrors

30 Zombies- standard bearer

20 Skeletons- Champion, Standard bearer, Musician

Corpse Cart

 

I took a nice mix of troops and heros from the war scrolls to try and have a bit of variety for my first game.

 

Matt's army consisted of:

Orc Warboss

Orc Shaman

18 Boarboyz

27 Wolf Riders

2 Stonethrowers

Doom Diver

Spear Chukka

Giant

 

Some fast moving units and a lot of shooting to go up against.



Battlefield

Battle Report 13- 1500 pts Dark Angels Ravenwing vs Orks

This week's battle report was 1500 pts of my Dark Angels Ravenwing army facing off against Sebastian's Orks. When I arrived at Dundee Wargames club, I found that our 6'x4' board had been laid out with the foamboard cityfight terrain that I had recently brought to the club, providing plenty of cover for the Orks and some lovely dangerous terrain for all my bikers. We rolled up The Relic as the mission we were going to play.

 

My army consisted of:

RAVENWING STRIKE FORCE-

Sammael (in CS)
Librarian- Mastery level 2, Bike (in RB1)

6 Command squad- Champion, Apothecary, Ravenwing standard (CS)

5 Ravenwing bikers- 2 Grav guns, sergeant with meltabombs (RB1)
5 Ravenwing bikers- 2 meltaguns, sergeant with meltabombs (RB3)
5 Ravenwing bikers- Flamer, sergeant with meltabombs (RB2)
5 Ravenwing bikers- Plasma gun, sergeant with meltabombs (RB4)

RAVENWING SUPPORT SQUADRON (RSS)-
Darkshroud- Assault Cannon
3 Ravenwing Landspeeders- Heavy bolters, assault cannons

For this battle, I decided to field an all Ravenwing force. The Ravenwing strike force consisted of Sammael leading a full Ravenwing command squad. I took a Librarian on a bike to lead one of the other bike squad and was keen to see what his powers could do against the Orks (technically not a legal choice in the strike force, but my opponent was kind enough to let me field him). I took 4 bike squads to fill out the strike force, each squad with different special weapons to face whatever the Orks could throw at me. The last choice in the army was a formation I was wanting to test out, the Ravenwing support squadron. I was keen to see how the Ravenshield ability would work out and thought that this was a great chance to test it (the Ravenshield allows the support squadron to fire overwatch at a friendly Ravenwing unit being charged within 24").

My psychic powers were; Mindworm, Seed of Fear and Righteous Repugnance. Seed of Fear would be great against the Orks, forcing them to fail more morale checks would mean more casualties for the mobs. Righteous repugnance would also be very useful for giving the command squad the extra attacks to deal with any large mobs I may come up against.

Astra Militarum Army (Picture heavy)

I blame Dan Abnett.

 

I was re-reading the Gaunt's Ghosts series of novels (a series that I would highly recommend) and his description of the battles of the Imperial Guard were so fantastic that it made me want to collect an Imperial Guard army (back when they were still the Imperial Guard).

My guard army in full.

I hit ebay to pick up the beginnings of an army and one of my first purchases was the Gaunt's Ghosts squad and some Tanith troopers. When I started the army, these were no longer available from GW directly, so I probably paid more than I should have for them, but I had to own the models that got me collecting them in the first place. My initial plan was to use them as the command squad for my army; Gaunt as the commander and his unit as the command squad. In games these days they tend to be used as a veterans squad with sniper rifles. I would love to have collected an entire Tanith First and Only army, but my modelling skills are insufficient to kit out an entire guard army with camo cloaks.

Hobby Sunday 19/07/15

This week I managed to get some work done on my Ravenwing and White Scars armies.

 

The grav gun arms that I had previously undercoated were painted and attached to my Ravenwing bikers. The paint scheme on guns was kept simple, in line with my other bikers. The grav gun was given a drybrush of boltgun metal and then painted blood red.