Arrgghhh!

Me again. Yet another day off in an attempt to get things finished and what happens? I spent most of today going back and forth between the Accident Repair Centre. Most of the morning was spent with them going through the details of what happened (some numpty drove into my car then drove off), and then I find out they've given me the wrong courtesy car! All sorted now but I've got to pop off again to sort out some other odd jobs. So out of the 8 hours or so I wanted to do today, I've probably done 30 minutes undercoating. Plus pointis that I'm quite impressed with using Halford Car Primer as my undercoat spray. Costs about the same as GW but you get 700ml rather than 400ml and it seems to spray better than the GW one. I wasn't expecting to be able to do much as it's quite cold and damp outside but the Halford Spray did the job!

Random Rant!

Just venting here folks, so please bear with me. Went to take my car to the garage and found out that the dozy woman at the call centre hadn't booked me in so now I've got to take it on Monday. Then the British weather returned to normal (rain with a chance of more rain), so no spray painting for me, and to top it off I went to my local GW which doesn't seem to stock anything but Battalion Boxes!

Not the worst day ever but mildly annoying when I had taken the day off to paint skaven up. I've vented the frustration on my PS3 and been watching videos about Red Dead Redemption (cowboy version of GTA) which I'm quite excited about. I've also got on my to do list, to find time to read Salamander by Nick Kyme. I've got a soft spot for the Black Skinned, Red Eyed, Nice Marines and I quite enjoyed the short story in the Heros of Space Marines book which came out last year. I nearly picked up James Swallows Blood Angel Series but I've heard lots of bad things about it and I don't really want to ruin anything for when I get my hands on the Codex (which I'm looking forwards to how they are fleshing out the background). I've also discovered that I can't seem to finish a WFB book while I can read the 40k ones over and over again. No idea why.

Anyway, I'll get back to moaning about the weather and call centres! :(

It's oh so quiet or something like that

So a fair few days since my last update as real life has been butting in. Work is starting to get busy, which is interesting when the team I'm in has shrunk and now has more inexperianced members than experianced members. Well it's interesting in a watching Mr Bean kind of way - Mildly amusing the first time and then quite dull and annoying afterwards. I've also had somebody done a hit and run on my car during the 'big freeze' (for those Johnny Foreigner folks, the UK was hit by lots of cold white stuff that we don't see very often and the whole country went silly). Thankfully me and my wife were okay but it made me say a few choice words about the person who did it. My car is going to the garage tomorrow and I'll be having some random car in exchange while mine is being tinkered with. Funny thing is that I can see me having a Smart Car (ickle car) to drive up to Sheffield in next weekend.

Speaking of next weekend, Sheffield is almost upon me! Painting wise I've been slacking and got a lot of grey models looking back at me while I type this. Cunning plan is to have a couple of last minute days off, starting with tomorrow to start the monsterous task of painting 160 off models in a week. Then I need to sort out some terrain! Even though the panic of not having things finished is starting to set in, I think I must really like it as I seem to do it a lot.

Meanwhile during all this real life stuff and none painting, I've signed myself up to another couple of events. First one is the Dragon Slayer Bash being run at Maelstrom Games, and this is a one day event to be a warm up for the South Coast GT which I missed out on. Tickets have sold out now but I'm looking forwards to this as Maelstrom Games is not too far away and the guys who run it really like gaming. Second event is a local affair known as The Midlands Open. It's being run by one of my regular opponents Luke and it should be fun as well as local! There's still tickets left which you can find HERE.

I think that's it for the moment apart from waiting for my Tyranid Codex. Due to the delays with the weather, Maelstrom Games couldn't send any out for the Codex release date (last Saturday) but I should have mine for the weekend. I had a peek at it last week when I popped into my local GW for a nose and it looks nice. Not ground breaking (or even game breaking) but should keep fans happy.

2010 is going to be a good year....

Wow, it's 2010 now and I thought it would be a good time to post something on my blog, especially seeing how lazy I've become.

When I was a little boy, 2010 seemed such a long way away and here it is! It's quite a big year for me and my family as there are quite a few big birthdays (I'm 30, my mom is 60, my sister-in-law is 18, and my Grandfather-in-law is 80, plus there are quite a few other big birthdays as well!!!). I also looks like 2010 is going to be a good year for GW as we seem to be having some really cool releases coming up soon.

Firtsly we have the new Tyranids next week and they sound quite cool (plus the Trygon looks a cool model) and then we have Beastmen coming out in Feb. I got to see the army book today and it looks like it's going to be a sneaky top tier list as a lot of people have been poo-pooing them (mainly due to the models) as they have lost a lot of the things in the 'current' book. Personally I like all the new models as well as some of the new rules (Core Chariots, Big Monsters, Hatred if you pass a Ld Test, Bestigor who can nick standards) but I can see some players being annoyed due to Ungor now being on 20mm bases. I think I would be annoyed but move on six months and I can see people not even worrying about it.

Also I had a email this morning off GW, stating that we will be seeing Blood Angels in April. I'm quite excited about this as ever since the 2nd editon of 40K, I've always wanted to collect a company of Blood Angels and seeing how I'm thinking I want to go to a 40K heat this year (as well as a WFB one!), I'm taking that as a sign. Add into the mix that we should be seeing the Relic/GW Space Marine game at some point this year as well as more info about the Ultramarine Movie, (and rumours about 8th editon of WFB and new plastic technology where you have models with no moldlines!) you can see why I'm thinking 2010 is going to be good year!

Skavenmas!

Wot ho folks, did you have a nice Christmas? We had a nice one but very tired at the moment as ended up seeing loads of family and being all over the place.

Wargaming wise I've had a very nice set of Skaven Toys with a Battalion box set, Stormvermin set, and a Doomwheel. With the bits I've got already I should have the main bulk of the Skaven army I want to paint up. I'm hoping to get a bit done on my Lunch breaks at work this week, and hopefully I have all my Slaves and Clanrats assembled before the year leaps out of the door!

It also looks like 2010 is going to be a very good year wargaming wise as we've got the 8th edition of WFB coming out and I've also started getting the twinges for 40k again, and the new Nid release looks brilliant along with the rumours about Blood Angels and maybe Dark Eldar or Necrons coming out later in the year.

Flames and Slaughter

Tonight, I shall be having my first game of Flames of War (I've dabbled with it in the past but never had a 'proper' game of it). I'm looking forwards to it even though I'm very anti-historical wargames due to my experiance of it when I was younger. The reason for this is the people I started gaming with often ended up turning the game into a simulation and would have 'discussions' during the game that unit X couldn't do that in real life, etc etc. Because of this, I've always been wary of historical games as I think they should be a bit of fun doing 'what-if' scenarios as well as having fun researching different eras of history while you assemble, paint and game with your army. So it's off round Stevyn's later to have some Americans batter Germans (or visa versa), while I scare him with horror stories about the new Skaven book.

Speaking of Skaven, I'm off to the Sheffield Slaughter in January. The Sheffield Slaughter is an yearly event held by the Dragon Slayers and is regarded as one of the best events in the calendar. It's got a very heavy composition rules set but it's still attracted 80 players. Me and Chris will be going, with Chris taking a varient of his Combat Dwarfs (but with no Runesmith on an Anvil as it's banned) and me taking Skaven. I shall be fielding the following....

Warlord
Plague Priest on Plague Furnace
Chieftain BSB with Shield
Warlock Engineer

23 Stormvermin with Shields, Full Command, and Poisoned Wind Mortar Weapon Team
25 Clanrats with Shields, Standard, Musician, and Doom Flayer Weapon Team
25 Clanrats with Shields, Standard, Musician, and Doom Flayer Weapon Team
25 Skavenslaves
25 Skavenslaves

25 Plague Monks with Full Command
6 Plague Censer Bearers
6 Gutter Runners

1 Doomwheel
1 Warp-lightning Warp Cannon

Now this is a big change for me as I've been getting used to my Daemons for the last three months, but Skaven are an army I've always wanted as I like the background and the new models look nice (proper 80's/90's style GW/Jes Goodwin!). It's a lot of models but with a can of Army Painter I should be able to do this.

Highs and Lows

I went to the Destruction Derby over the weekend which was a nice one day event organised by the Derby Wargames Society, of which the Ben's from Bad Dice are members of and they helped organise the event. It was a fun event of random scenarios and meeting new people.We could take anything as long as we had the rules to back them up and we saw a nice variety in the armies. I took a slight varient on my Daemon list as it's the only thing I have painted up at the moment. I took....

Lord of Change who was a Level 4 Wizard and had Flames of Tzeentch and Tzeentch's Will
2 Heralds of Slaanesh with Etherblades and riding Chariots

2 x 10 Horrors
13 Daemonettes with a Standard
2 x 5 Flesh Hounds
4 Flamers
1 Fiend

Not the hardest list in the world but then again not the weakest. My army worked out to 2013 points which was the limit for the event and we were going to get a special prize. Predictably though, pretty much everybody brought an army bang on the points, so the Ben's weren't expecting this and gave out dice instead.

Game 1 - Luke and High Elves

Luke is one of my regular opponents from the Dudley Darklords and a very good player. Earlier in the week we had played a practise game of the scenario for game 1 and a won by a big margin. Little did I know the tables would turn. I had originally grudged another DD player (Adam Jones aka Tank) but he dropped out so I grudged Luke as he had taken his place. The Bens placed us on Table 1.

Luke took a Lord on a Dragon with a Halberd, re-rollable save and a ward save, Lvl 1 mage, 2 x 10 archers, 16 White Lions with Full Command and Immune to Psych banner, 5 Dragon Princes with the Ignore Terrain Banner, 5 Shadow Warriors, 2 Bolters and 2 Eagles.

The Scenario was beat the living daylights out of a goblin who was being naughty with the Kings daughter. The goblin sat in the middle of the board and the player who scored the most wounds on it won. You could only score a wound by rolling a 6. Luke was more prepared for this game and I deployed badly because I was worried about the Dragon and Dragon Princes (in our last game Luke though I had Siren Song and had deployed the Dragon facing the other way). Luke pretty much took apart my army with the Dragon and Princes (which half my daemons couldn't damage due to having flaming attacks) and then peppered the goblin to bits with his shooting. Game ended with Luke on 11 and me on 3 which was a reversal of our scores on Tuesday.

Game 2 - Richie and Ogres

Richie had travelled all the way up from London with Og Games (who had sponsored the prizes for the event) and he had brought Ogres. Both of us had been beaten quite badly and were on the lowest ranked table - 18. Richie had been spanked by Adam Hall who had brought a Skaven with 2 Abominations and other bits which ripped Richie to bits. Richie was a bit worried about facing Daemons with his Ogres but we both knew this was going to be a fun game whatever the outcome.

Richie had a Tyrant, Bruiser, 2 Butchers, 2 x 3 Bulls, 2 x 3 Ironguts, 9 Gnoblar Trappers, 2 Maneaters and 2 Rhinox riders. In theory this should be an easy game for me if I can pick my combats.

The Scenario was a normal pitched battle but the who battlefield was effected by the Rainlord spell and each player turn, your army got blasted by Forked Lighting on a roll of 1 for each unit (1 or 2 if you had a ward save). Game starts with me getting the first turn and I move everything ready for charges. My 2 Chariots face off against the Rhinoxes with a Lord of Change nearby to support with Gift of Chaos. Rich moves everything around but knows things will be bad next turn and I charge my Chariots in and move my LoC up. So I cast Gift of Chaos hoping for a few wounds and I miscast which causes a wound to my LoC. My Chariots then cause a couple of wounds from Impact Hits and I get ready to watch my Heralds have fun. With 8 attacks hitting on 3's and wounding on 5's should cause lots of damage and win me the combat. Lots of fluffed attacks and wounds later and the Heralds are bricking it as the Rhinoxes are unscathed! Then for the rest of the game my dice decided to not play properly and I started playing like a numpty. Richie pretty much took all my toys off the board while his army was all there apart from a unit of Bulls and Gnoblars. Richie won by lots and I put my models in the middle of the board knowing I wasn't moving tables. It was a fun game watching my army self destruct but a bit frustrating but Richie did make it fun as we chatted all the way through the game.

Game 3 - Lee and Orcs of Chaos

Lee had travelled up with Richie as part of the Og Games crowd and had brought his Orcs of Chaos. Basicly it was a Warriors of Chaos army converted up from Orcs and Goblins who had been seduced by the bloodletting for Khorne.

He had a Lord of Khorne on a Jugger, Hero on Jugger, Lvl 1 wizard, 2 x 5 hounds, 2 x 5 horsemen, 14 marauderers with MoK and Flails, 20 odd marauderers with MoK, full command and shields, 15 Chosen, 5 Knights, and a Chariot of Khorne.

This game was to get into my opponents deployment zone while the entire battlefield was effected by the Pandaemonium spell (miscast on a double and units can not use the generals leadership) while a Infernal Gateway was strolling around on the board. Both of us deployed our armies and we found I had weighted my Right Flank while Lee weighted his Right as well, which left the main bulk of our armies as far away from each other as possible. Lee asked my why I had charged the Rhinoxen in my last game and I said you'll see but I thought I could have them. Couple of turns later and my Chariots were in his deployment zone having gone through his Knights and he agreed that I should have had those Rhinoxes last game. The game was pretty much me getting my Chariots and Flesh Hounds into his deployment zone while the rest of my army acted as a speed bump to slow Lees down while my LoC could blast away with his magic (and strangely only miscast once all game). Game ended and we found that I had got 1300 odd points while Lee only managed 1100 points which game me a win. If Lee had been able to get his chosen into my deployment zone he would have won but I think a combination of deploying badly with them and me worring him with the LoC constantly zapping models off the unit, meant he didn't push them as far as he could.

In the end I came 29th thanks to my win (not bad in a 36 person event). It was a really good event and made a nice change from all the 'serious' warhammer the last few months. I really liked the scenarios and it was a good venue to play at and I shall be going again next year.