Merry Christmas fellow gamers

A beautiful sunny day here in Levin, New Zealand for Christmas 2011. I would like to wish all my fellow gamers a very merry Christmas and hope you enjoy your day today.

As for most gamers our net of contacts is cast fairly wide these days with tournaments and fun club or campaign weekends bringing us together from around the country or in fact the world. So I would like thank my local mates I game with whether it be wargaming or monday night roleplaying (Cody, Stu, Hadleigh, Womble and Mitch), the boys in Auckland I recently had a great time of Mordheim with(Dan and Andrew), Richard in Sydney who graciously hosted Cody and I for High Lords of Terra, Wil who now resides in the frozen north of Canada and Ryan who over Summer is in Perth who thanks to email still discusses army builds, tactics and painting on a regular basis, Pete Dunn over at www.thefieldsofblood.com who has run and hosted some extremely fun Warhammer fantasy weekends and the other Wellington/NZ based gamers I have meet and played with at these events and many other people who I have gamed with in the last 12 months, thank you.

So above is pictured the gaming haul I very happily received about an hour ago from my wife and despite what other people may say about Dreadfleet I am extremely pleased to have been given it as I wanted it but spent my gaming dollars on Necron units for the joint army. Upon opening the box the level of detail in the terrain and miniatures is fantastic! I know the local boys are keen to give it a go so it will be put to good use, right Cody?

The Avatar of War Models are awesome, its good to know I can open up a website like www.slavetopainting.co.nz on Ali's Ipad and she actually pays attention. She says they arrived in two days as well so bonus. The Goblin King should soon be leading my Goblin horde while the other two just had serious cool value for me and I'm sure Stu will 'borrow' the Daemon for his army while the Witchhunter will make it to the monday night rpg table and a Mordheim warband.

So I hope other people may have received the gift of gaming like I have and I look forwardd to what the rest of the day brings - my mother in law does like warhammer terrain and my sister in law was sent the 'wish list' too...

Completed Uriah and Confessor

Finished the flames on the confessor and freehand on both last night.

It was nice to finally paint the Confessor as he is an old model from the necromunda days and Uriah was enjoyable as well with many different textures. I havn't shown it though I should have but his cloak as viewed from behind is fur with a couple purity seals and his backpack has an assortment of equipment tied on with rope.

My wife has informed me this afternoon that she has finally done my Christmas shopping at GW in Wellington of all places, new toys in a few days for me it seems.

Uriah and Confessor almost done

Been back into the painting after an Auckland Foo Fighters break last week.

Got in some great games of Mordheim with the boys up there - cheers 'Damage'. I'll be making a battle report of the Monday night four way brawl on the fantastic home made Mordheim table - that is once I put the provided notes into an entertaining order.

Anyways the two nutjobs of the Ecclesiarchy are almost complete and I should have them done tonight but here is a WIP shot of the pair

Here are the two individually after a little more work - the photos are taken with my new phone so I'm still playing with settings though very happy with the quality with the basic shots so far.

I will post completed shots very soon and look out for the Mordheim tug of war over the Skaven informant.

WIP Uriah and Confessor

Here are some WIP shots of Uriah and a formerly Necromunda Redemtionist for Wil's Sisters of Battle army.

Normally I wouldn't show shots of miniatures in this state but during the week I sent some test shots to Wil of these guys at an earlier stage and also some step by step shots of an Ogre for him.

I actually think these raw shots motivate me more to get work done and also people can see the different layers that can go into a finished miniature. I would also like to point out that I am not an overly neat painter at these early stages but the final results always tend to work out.

So back to the painting and a big Good Luck to the guys at NZ Masters in Auckland, go the Wellingtonians!!

Finished Trazyn

Here is the finished old man Trazyn to you as my Necron Overlord.

I ended up doing a little light effect on the face plate and ribcage. Also based him finally yesterday. Used a chunk of white resin from the GF9 rubble tub. Based it in Khemri Brown with heavy drybrush of Tausept Ochre and Iyanden Darksun. Following this a Baal red then Devlan mud wash with a little bit more Ochre and Darksun highlighting. Add some static grass and pin the old fella on and he's all done.

Also test painted an ogre to make a simple step by step guide for Will in the soon to be frozen north of Canada as well as some more work on Uriah Jacobus and a formerly Necromunda Confessor for him as well. So nice to get some productive painting done without having the call of Skyrim ruin it for me... though once you're the Listener for the Dark Brotherhood everything else in game just doesn't seem as fun ;)

Trazyn the Infinite

Or Old Man River as someone calls him...

Finished Trazyn last night amidst other painting projects. I may add some subtle green light effects to his eyes and ribs cage but I'm happy with him for now. Have to base him but that can wait until we work out exactly how we are going to do that. Thinking a tanned stone/rock look maybe with a slight reddish hue.

As my first finecast model I have painted he was in pretty good shape once I gave him a tidy up, and the lighter material was a lot easier to deal with and assemble.

The ceramic plating will be carried on through the other Necron models as will the blueish tinge to the metal but the red will be my colour of choice through my forces as a spot colour to signify which Overlord the Necron's obey. Though Stu did like the red so it may become universal anyway.

Still don't have a list myself but did play against the new Necrons on the weekend and all I can say is scarabs FTW, the entropic strike over so many attacks just chews through mech. I used a balanced vanilla marine list so Stu could see how the new rules would go against a variety of units and they were very successful. The large scarab units propped up by Spyders multi assaulting vehicles is rough and the Wraiths are a nice tarpit unit with their 3++ saves. I know the net says they are not competitive but who cares, for the home gaming environment they are a lot of fun.

Necron - 1 week in

Last weekend Cody, Stu and I purchased a lot of new additions to our large Necron collection. We came out of GW with 2 boxes of Immortal/Deathmarks, 2 Praetorian/Lychguard, 2 Doomsday/Ghostark, 2 Command Barge/Annihilation barge and an Imotekh, Trazyn and Overlord and of course 3 codices.

With an inventory of the old collection taken we had over 3K of existing models without any HQ choices or C'tan and with the additions and a little planning we figure it'll be a bout 5K soon in total.

A very good basis to now build armies out of but gebus where to start! I really like how the Necron book is not an OP Ward tome like lets say GK are and I feel their awesome fluff and odd rules puts them more alongside good Kelly books like the Dark Eldar so well done Mr Ward on that. What I do find is that it is an army of nice little trick combos, you just have to plan your FOC choices around them.

I have no interest in building a WAAC list like the Spyder/Scarab/Imotekh list which has appeared online in the past week. This will be a nice list for fun games at home and one that will work with the collection that Cody and Stu will also be working with.

So far I like the looks of the terrain effecting rules - Writhing Worldscape on a C'tan shard, the Tremor staves of the Crypteks and the Diviner to cause trouble in your opponents first turn. If I work out a list it should be a big version of the nuisance that my twin Nightspinners cause my opponents just on a larger scale. Well see what I come up with. I'm finding the troop choices the hard things to nail down, Warrior blobs, in a barge, MSU Immortals?

In the meantime I have built a unit of Deathmarks and a Command barge which nicely can swap the dais for the Tesla Destructors and be an Annihilation barge too. I will say this for the kits... so many frakkin parts involved, while impressed I am not looking forward to tackling the Doomsday/Ghostark at all without some careful planning first.

Necron - Test Painting

Here are three old battered Necron Warriors which got a quick repaint for the new joint army. I have not stripped these or anything elaborate they are just a simple repaint over there existing colour which was a dusty metal.

We have on the right the "70's" scheme as the boys called it. I think it will go well on another model type like Tau but not the Necron.

On the far left we have a simple boltgun base coat with a wash of devlan mud and gryphonne sepia. The gun and shoulders are chaos black with a successive highlight on the edges of dark angel green, snot green then bilious green.

The central one is the one I completed about 10 minutes ago. Boltgun metal base, Asurmen blue wash then devlan mud wash. Little bit of boltgun metal and mithril silver highlighting. Plates and head are Dheneb Stone, light devlan mud wash, then edge/highlight dheneb stone then skull white. The gun is chaos black with grey edging. The little bit of green is the same as the above example.

I like the central one the most so far and I think the stone plates could look good on the larger vehicles but I must find agreement with Cody and Stu, right lads ;)

If any particular elements of the trial schemes so far look appealing let me know, or any one has suggestions. For example I could try the body colour sepia/mud washed metal with the dheneb stone plating?

Cheers

Necron Time - 1 Tomb World - 3 Overlords

So this coming Saturday sees the return of the Necrons.

Now my good friend Stu is very happy about this as he has been emailing me almost daily with new rumours/pics/updates - you can tell he likes them. He of course is going to be playing them again and he in the past few weeks has had a couple of good games with them for nostalgia sake.

Between Stu and myself we have a lot of Necrons already, all the basics and a few toys from the previous run. Well with the release of the Necron pics a couple weeks ago then the official release over the weekend I myself are liking the looks of the too. I was planning on buying the codex straight away but I do that with all the 40k books, now however I am going to be buying some models too and we have Cody also getting ready to open his wallet for the ancient empire.

Yesterday we had some usual Sunday gaming with some 3 player 750 point games for a laugh then it was 1850 Dark Eldar vs Blood Angels with Cody playing DE and Stu and Womble using the BA. Throughout all this dice rolling and name calling we discussed the results of 3 of us buying Necrons and decided it is a very good thing.

I have wanted a 'house' army for a while now. My regular gaming mates leave all their toys at my place anyway as it's where we game. They have their own shelves and draws for their armies they commonly use so any of our gear is free to be used amongst us. I have wanted to take this a little further and all pitch in for an army that anyone can pick up and play with a variety of options. We made a few second hand Ork purchases and I have quite a bit of random Imperial guard models but we never really got inspired to create this communal force... until now.

New Codex, new models, good large base of models to use which two of us own already. Yesterday I decided we need a nice paint scheme which we can use across the whole range, Stu is happy for normal metal Necrons, Cody doesn't care as long as they 'look cool' and I of course want to do something a little different from the codex standard. This results in me painting a handful of Necron Warriors in test schemes we all agree on. Yesterday I painted a black bodied/orange head and shoulder plated warrior but he was too 70's apparently ;) so moved to standard boltgun metal with a green wash but with the green tubing was going to be 'too green' so now have a boltgun with sepia and devlan mud wash to be looked at tonight while we play D&D. We did agree to go with black/dark green armour plating like the GW ones for Stu so the worn washed metal is my contribution and it should look good. I suggested a spot colour of individual choice to denote who 'owns' particular units and Stu suggested painting the heads/faces in the chosen colour which will work well without detracted from the overall unified look.

So I'll get a pic of the test mini we are happy with after tonight and then it's the wait until Saturday when we descend on GW Wellington for new toys. The HQ models have already been 'baggsed' with Stu claiming Imotekh, Cody the new Overlord and me being left with old man Trazyn - I'm ok with that though as upon closer inspection he has an Eldar rune he has poached on his belt so seems fitting.

So as Saturday approaches and we get to see what Mr Ward has done to the Necrontyr... ahem please share any suggestions you may have for the Tomb World's awakening

Cleatus the Cultist?

Got your attention?

Had a fairly productive weekend painting wise even if I didn't actually play any games.

Got another 10 Sisters of Battle done so painted this inbred little fella. I have plans for him and his 'kind' as they make great cultists/warrior acolytes for an Inquisition army or whatever you'd like to count it as.

The model is an old GW chaos cultist which I have a few of thanks to Gromm/Emmett giving me his Thousand Sons army many moons ago. He used the cultists as Sorcerer thralls in the old chaos codex, y'know the good one ;) The cultists have been sitting in the box of random imperial and character models with a simple coat of scorched brown the only thing on them. Being partially inspired by the washed out tones of the locust in Gears of War(which after not playing all week I finished yesterday - now they can look forward to tomorrow). The ragged cloth is Tausept Ochre and Iyanden Darksun with Devlan Mud washes. Quite like how he turned out so when I get another batch of SoB complete I may paint another to break up all the red armour.

In RPG news the boys start on the next chapter of Shackled City tonight with the Demonskar Legacy - once they get their xp from last week they should all be 8th level or very close and what has made life easier for them is the return of Womble/Aaron a longtime bud who has been off gaming for a few years because of work hours but hes back and rocking a drunken master Monk which balances the party nicely - welcome back Womble!

Reasons not excuses!

I have not posted for a couple weeks and the above is part of the 'reason' why.

After my original Xbox 360 suffered from the RROD a few months ago I have been patiently waiting for the right combo to be released for its replacement. With the release of Gears of War 3 I got the wonderful limited edition set as pictured above. However it is not GoW3 that has caused my blogging and painting to suffer but the fantastic Space Marine by THQ and Relic.

I like a lot of other 40k players I know have thoroughly enjoyed this game. I liked pretty much everything about it. They captured the 40k experience so well, the setting, graphics, story and music. I played it through solidly on Hard and finished it a while ago. So that would be the end of it right? No I then started multiplayer and other than being able to chat away to my mates in Auckland while playing I have really enjoyed it. I don't even mind the lag which maked the slow Thunder Hammer a bit arse. I have tinkered with the customizer a lot and settled on a gold armour with 'blood raven red' trim just like my custodes while my chaos skin is alpha legion.

But I really must get back to some serious painting, Wil is settled in Ottawa and I need to get his Sisters of Battle off to him. I have many many Orcs and Goblins to repair and paint so I can actually have a fantasy army done and Space Marine itself has inspired me to have a marine army of some sort for myself... sigh... So I shall do my best to ration my spare time better, I still want to finish GoW3 but that can wait a little bit until job1 - SoB are done.

To think that mid November Assassin's Creed Revelation and Skyrim are coming out Jebus. Alison tells me I'm forbidden playing Revelation unitl she finishes it first, something about not wanting the ending spoiled for her pssh! She did come home with the official Space Marine guide for me on Friday though as after flipping through it thought I would like the concept art section - she was right. Hmm Marines, traitor guard, Grey Knights, more Eldar... what to do... hard life this gaming carry on

Wryth's Week in Wargaming

Heres an update on what I've been doing wargame wise in the last week or so.

Above is the first 'Custode' Grey Knight Terminator I've started on for my Inquisition GK army. It's not quite done and as the photo shows I have to tidy up some edges but overall I'm happy with the worn golden shade to the armour. It was achieved with a boltgun metal and Mithril Silver base then successive layers of Golden Sepia wash and a little Devlan Mud. Not sure how I'm going to base the army yet but it may be amongst some arcane ruins or an old temple complex Coteaz and his forces have seen fit to cleanse.

This fella is a test paint for my possible Orc & Goblin force and I thoroughly enjoyed working on it. I know I would have potentially about 100 of these to paint but it was suprisingly fast to paint and not fiddly at all. The dirty golden hoods would be throughout the whole army as I see the potential force being comprised of travelling mercantile Orcs and Goblins capturing, training and selling off a menagerie of exotic beasties to other factions in the warhammer world. The yellow will represent their obsesson with gold/wealth. Already have ideas of a large wagons being dragged by Arachnaroks and Giants.

In actual game play I had a couple games last weekend against Dave from Feilding who I met at CTA. He brought along a very nasty dual Stormraven Blood Angel build. Game 1 was against my standard tournament Eldar build and I took control of the table soundly. A couple of bad morale checks from Dave saw his jump pack combat squads flee the table from mass fire and Dante's command squad not moving from their dropped position due to Nightspinner attacks saw a combined round of shooting and Harlequin assault wipe any threat off the board.

Cody played him next with his Dark ELdar but unfortunatly didn't do so well. I wasn't watching the game but as far as I can tell the Blood Angels massacred the DE.

I threw together a fun CSM force after that and even though I lost in the end I destroyed a satisfying amount of Daves force. After that quick game we had time for one more bash so out came the WIP Coteaz/GK list. Ryan has been helping me work on the list and via email had provided me with a very nice build with most of the toys I like in. The general strategy for the list is to create a nice 24" bubble of death for the opponent which worked wonderfully against the Blood Angels! Dave had no idea what hit him when my DCA/Crusader squad barrelled out of their Land Raider into Dante and co and the other DCA/Crusader unit aboard the reserved Stormraven flew in later in the game to wipe out his objective camping combat squads. The Callidus Assassin is proving a nice one shot nuisance for the enemy but usually getting killed by mass fire after the fact. The rest of the build works well though so I think I'll keep at it and see how it performs in the long run.

Other than all those games on Sunday we had an enjoyable D&D game monday night with the boys dealing with a Dragon, insane Bard and a Cryohydra in good order to carry on with the 4th main part of the Shackled City campaign.

I have been distracted as the weeks gone on though as my new limited edition Gears of War 3 xbox arrived =D oh xbox how I missed you so. I'm quite impressed with Gears 3 but thats no suprise however I have popped in Space Marine and my god what a bloody fun game that is. They have captured the look and scale of 40k so well and after a rocky start I've even been having a good time playing multiplayer too - gotta love the customisation tool set. A modified Black Templar for the loyalists and a sweet Alpha Legion skin for Chaos!

Anyways on the painting table now is a metal Wraithlord bound for Oz, a hadful of random Imperial Guardsmen as I experiment trying to find an Imperial colour scheme I like and more newly arrived Sisters of Battle for Wil!

Oh well a little more Xbox then back to painting right...

Post Homecon

I had a fantastic weekend of gaming in Wellington.

Firstly I had 2 very entertaining games of 40K vs Ryan and his GKs while I playtested a couple variations of my hybrid GK/Coteaz list. A highlight was in the first game both our Dreadknights getting into assault with each other and with similtaneous rolls taking each other out via their force weapons. I also started putting a GK Brotherhood champion in with the mixed DCA/Crusader squad. Rerolls to hit in that squad is very nasty and the Brotherhood champ is great for picking off IC's and MC's.

On Saturday I made my way to Pete Dunn's house with transport kindly provided by Ryan(he wanted to see if WHFB was for him) and had two awesome days of Fantasy games.

I may not have placed overly high up the ranks(I came 8/10) but I won half my games! I got to play against some very good opponents Tim, Tom, Neil, Peter, Pete and Ben with some very nice armies and talk about the game system and various army books with people who know what they're talking about.. most of the time.

However after even the first days games I felt that the WoC are not for me, they are a very good army with plenty of variety but the march across the board and hit stuff style of play just didn't entertain me enough. So after skimming the Ogre book, reading the Tomb King book in between England beating up Argentina Saturday night and a few more chats on Sunday with the lads I think I'm going to try Orcs and Goblins next.

They are the army I originally played with when I started Fantasy many many years ago with a school friend who had gotten the old box set with the High Elves and Goblins and large cardboard stand ins for Grom the Paunch on his Chariot and the Griffon. They have a balanced up to date book, they have an extensive model range I can have a lot of fun with, they have monsters(yay) and if your game plan falls apart just blame the stupid animosity rules and keep on laughing. I have quite a large collection of the greenskins dumped into boxes so with a bit of sorting and care I may be able to get something up and running...or fleeing as is most likely!

So a big thank you to Pete for the invite, use of his Chaos models and his fantastic hospitality in his home. I may not have 100% settled on a fantasy army yet but at least I'm eliminating some and narrowing the options.

Homecon Chaos take 2?!

Ok so after Jack's advice and thinking a litle bit more about what I'd like the army to do I have come up with the following, comments please as usual

Sorcerer Lord, L4, Infernal Puppet, Talisman of Preservation, Stream of Corruption 370

Exalted Hero, Tzeentch, BSB, Shield, Ironcurse Icon 155
Exalted Hero, Tzeentch, Disc, Charmed Shield 5, Book of Secrets, 3rd Eye of Tzeentch, Talis of Prot, Biting Blade 215

20 Chaos Warriors, Tzeentch, FC, Shields, Standard of Discipline 385
30 Marauders, Khorne, FC, Flails 200
30 Marauders, Khorne, FC, GW 200
5 Chaos Hounds 30

6 Chaos Trolls
5 Chaos Knights, Khorne, Muso 240

Warshrine 130
Hellcannon 205

Total 2400

Keeps a mobile disc riding character to steal spells but has a better stat line so can threaten the rare lines more.

The warshrine will augment a unit where it needs too and the 6 trolls will indeed be more effective.

Got rid of the collar of Khorne as it did offend the fluff enthusiast in me! Tjough I am now missing the dispel scroll which can always be an bonus in games!

Chaos for Homecon me thinks

Well Homecon next weekend will help me decide if I'm going to invest in Warriors of Chaos as my main fantasy army.

The host Pete is kindly letting me borrow his models for the two days and I will bring a few along to supplement what I need.

Hopefully I will like them enough to get stuck into them with the paint as I don't have a fully painted army for fantasy. Personally its sucks big time considering how I usually clean up in the presentation category in 40K.

So heres my thoughts for a list which should function well and has a little bit of everything I'd like to buy and paint up.

Sorcerer Lord, L4, Infernal Puppet, Charmed Shield, Stream of Corruption Talisman of Preservation (shadow magic) 375

Sorcerer, L2, Tzeentch, Disc, Talisman of Prot, Third Eye, Dispel Scroll 225
Exalted Champ, Tzeentch, BSB, Collar of Khorne, Enchanted Shield 185

24 Chaos Warriors, Tzeentch, Shields, FC, Standard of Discipline 449
30 Marauders, Khorne, FC, Flails 200
30 Marauders, Khorne, FC, GW 200
5 Chaos Hounds 30
5 Chaos Hounds 30
5 Marauder Horsemen, Slaanesh, Muso, L Armour, Spears, Throwing Spears 96

3 Chaos Trolls
5 Chaos Knights, Khorne, muso, standard, Banner of Eternal Flame 270

Hellcannon 205
Total 2400

Everything should perform some role in most games, the trolls are a personal want as I'd love to get the plastic River Trolls and have some fun. The second Mage is so I can make a cool conversion I have in mind and the rest is what I see tearing through a dead forest leaking shadows and darkness from their skin. When I actually paint up a test model it'l make sense.

CTA '11

With the weekend been and gone team 'Primarch' as we called ourselves did very very well in the 40k at Call to Arms '11 in Wellington.

I played my Eldar list which I have not really changed since Masters last year so it was dual Night Spinner harassment and super clowns all the way as usual. I played Ryan Lister first, in hindsight we should have redrawn but we always have fun. So after I had given him a good beating on Friday afternoon in a practice game he retaliated with psychotrope grenades doing a number on my Avatar and Harlequins(both times getting reduced to 1 attack and hit automatically!!!) and pretty soundly winning.

Next I played Jared Odom(ithink) with a mobile Kosarro Khan bike list. He had just been defeated by Cody's Dark Eldar in round 1 and to get me next was a bit rough as he had only played the list for the first time that day! The Eldar pretty much wiped him off the board with a combined charge of Harlequins and an Avatar causing a record 29 wounds on his bike command squad - 19 of which were invulnerable saves only.

The third game of the day was against Peter Rundlett and his Dark Angels with Belial at the helm. We had a very entertaining game exchanging fire throughout the early turns as the meteor objective came down not far from the centre. I forced Belial and his scoring terminator companion off the crater in the last turns with a combined dual wave serpent tank shock and mass focused fire giving me a big win at the end of the day.

Sunday morning had me play PJ Smith and his motley Ork horde. I can never beat the green tide at tournaments try as I might. After removing an awful lot of Ork models off the board I could not manage to kill 3 seemingly invulnerable Orks contesting the centre of the board in a burning building. These Orks were the remnants of a mob who had spent 11 rounds of assault phases with the Avatar and had not bloody run away even after the Avatar kill their warboss in 1 go! The Avatar rolling like a n00b didn't help and after grabbing/contesting what quarters I could PJ snuck a 1 point lead winning the game.

Last game of the event had me across from Carson and his Mephiston Blood Angel list. After some initial rule discussions and clarifications we got under way (you cannot put Mephiston in a command squad he is not an IC). Carson almost completely null deployed against me in a 3 objective game and I swiftly suppressed what elements arrived each turn. The Harlequins camped the Alpha objective and 1 shotted the BA Assault squad which jumped onto the board. The Avatar had no close combat, content to patrol between 2 objectives throwing his Wailing Doom at things. The 2 units of Assualt terminators gave me pause but some Doom aided focus fire had them worn down. Mephiston fell prey to Runes of Warding losing 3 wounds to perils while mass fire got the last 2. I ended with my farseer solo charing his remaining incomplete tactical squad to pull them off their objective. This with plenty of Eldar left on the table gave me a big win to end the competition on.

Wil used a Blood Angel build he came up with last weekend! As the Sisters are still a work in progress. He used two Assault squads in discounted Landraiders, a stormraven carrying a Reclusiarch lead Death Company and Death Company dread, 10 sniper and ML scouts and a ML devastator squad. Bit of a straight forward smash you in the face build and it worked a charm for him. I believ he only lost 1 game! The competitive beast which was nerfed by the Tyranid codex returned for his last tourney in NZ before he heads to Canada.

Cody and his Dark Eldar were on a roll with 4 wins and a draw! Lords in Sydney was obviously a good experience for him and he learnt some lessons which showed. The army itself also looked great on the tables, if I do say myself ;D Cody had some tough opponents but he focused on the missions and kicked some arse!

Ryan after giving me a slap in round 1 went on to also only have 1 'donut'(no point) defeat and his foot slogging Grey Knights went on to multiple victories. I will have to get a rundown on his games and had little tim e to before I headed home.

With this fine performance from the team where did this leave us? Well, Ryan took the best Sportsman medal and came 5th overall! Will got the bronze medal with 3rd, I scored both best painted and 2nd overall medals and Cody rocked it with gold for 1st place! We won 'em all!! I also was presented with an award for best presented for the whole event, thats out of all the game systems in play at Call to Arms this year.

I must say results aside I thoroughly enjoyed myself, Hagen did a wonderful job as TO even if every game he came and told my opponents to destroy my Nightspinners for bonus TO points! It was awesome talking to Wes Barclay as usual, still not facing up against him, I'll grudge match next time. We came up with some very cool ideas for some future projects and conversions including a campaign weekend which was met with some enthusiasm by those included... watch this space... What a great send off for Wil with the group he plays with taking all the top spots, he'll have to berate us and keep us mean from afar.

Fantasy Decisions

With the choice to abandon the High Elven race for the time being I have been trying to make up my mind what WHFB army to get stuck into next.

I have looked through most of the army books and model ranges and came down to the following..

Vampire Counts - the army I have played the most over the years leading up to the end of 6th ed, after that my gaming group focused more and more on 40k so fantasy got shelved for all of 7th until the glorious 8th ed came out. I have a Von Carstien army with units of skeletons, zombies and small support units but all those are now fairly unappealing in 8th. The release of the new Terrorgiest has got me pretty enthused again and I have worked up a ghoul/strigoi themed list which I think would work well but it will mean starting over from scratch with the undead.

Ogres - never really liked them until I saw the new models incoming! The Stonetusk monstrosity alone is awesome for pure size and the new firebreather and executioner models are a credit to GW. There are a few Ogres in boxes in the gaming room belonging to a mate so I could procure them to start with.

Daemons of Chaos - On a couple of shelves in the gaming room sits a pretty big collection of Daemons in a fairly unloved state, sure they're painted well and can be assembled in numerous builds but Stu who owns the majority of the Daemons has abandoned them in 40k for his Blood Angels and is waiting like a child at Christmas for the new Necrons. He has used them in fantasy a bit but prefers the humour of the Orcs & Goblins and who can blame him. I own a few off Daemons to add to the mix including a FW Keeper of Secrets so could be a go...

...but I have made the sensible decision - if at all possible when talking about our toy soldiers! to get stuck into Warriors of Chaos. They tick a lot of boxes for me and the old pro and con list leans positively toward them.

I like heavily armoured infantry in fantasy settings, I played a paladin tank for years in World of Warcraft even if they were crap back in the day... and the basic Chaos Warrior is the only thing of its kind really. The variety of the army book is massive showing that I can personalize and theme lists many different ways. I can have big horde units of marauders, my blocks of chaos warriors, magic, knights and importantly big models like the new Ogre models I love to use as Chaos Ogres and the FW Greater Daemon would be a wicked Daemon Prince!

Also Cody acquired a massive amount of WoC models for a bargain price a little while ago from trademe and would love to move them off for an investment in Dark Elves. This means that while helping Cody get an army he actually really wants I have an awful lot of unpainted constructed models to start using straight away with several themes already floating about in my imagination.

So in the future I will be putting up a few ideas I have about a look for the army, nothing set right now but I will share soon enough. If anyone has any ideas on the look of an army I can make or any advice on unit builds and the like please do share

To CTA and Beyond...

The last couple days turned into something of an unplanned gaming weekend. Wil came to stay for a chill out weekend and with the reality of me finishing his Sisters to a satisfactory standard for Call to Arms being sweet 'F A' he started looking at alternative forces.

My gaming room is full of armies in various states of playability and having sat on a shelf for nearly a year unloved was Cody's Space Marine army is metallic purple with blue trim. Wil decided that combined with Stu's Death Company models he could pull out a decent Blood Angel list. This began a series of games which proved highly entertaining over the last two days.

He got to play against a quickly gathered Daemon army which I played for shits and giggles as well as Cody's experienced Dark Eldar list. Our numbers were also reinforced as Ryan from Wellington made his way up for a couple CTA practice games too.

Ryan played Cody and the Grey Knights null deploy tactic proved horrific for them as the Dark Eldar destroyed at range what ever arrived from reserve our tarpitted units with amazingly resilient Wyches. Later on Sunday Ryan played Stu who used a Daemon list to prove chapter 666's might against they're archnemesis. Lets just say the boys from the Imperium didn't do too well... though after an embarrassing loss for the Grey Knights it turns out remembering 'preferred enemy' would have made a massive difference!!!

In between all the impromptu 40K we got a game of Mansions of Madness in on Saturday night with myself in the role of Keeper. The bloodties scenario was won by the four Investigator players but I delighted in playing all manner of trauma cards on the poor quartet going so far as to have poor Ryan's character with a broken arm and leg and cowering in a crypt with 1 health left as the others braved the fire filled map to win the game and forcing Cody's tommy gun toting gangster into suicidal insanity. See doesn't that sound like fun?

Ryan and I also hashed out an Inquisitor list for me to use. CTA will probably be the last outing for the current Eldar build for a while having proved very successful and I want a new personal project to really go nuts on. I'll post the list in the next couple days.

In the meantime instead of painting dozens of Sisters of Battle in a frenzied state I just have to paint 3 missile launcher marines and Stu gets a custom painted Death Company Stormraven too!!!

A board game you say?

On an impulse I bought Mansions of Madness from Mightyape. I have wanted to get a decent 'board game' for a while but didn't want something too involved so that the women folk might not want to play too. I watched the youtube vid Mightypae had posted from Fantasy Flight Games and thought it sounded like fun.

It arrived Friday afternoon and four of us were playing it that night. The first game I admit was a little clunky as they tend to go in the initial play but other than a couple minor mistakes we got the hang of it pretty quick. I took the role of Keeper the GM equivalent whose goal it is to actually stop the investigators/players. My wife Ali, Stu/Tiros and his partner Jardine played the Investigators and even though neither side accomplished their goals it was bloody fun and left me wanting to play more.

Yesterday Ali and I had a couple more games alternating roles as Keeper and Investigator and worked out all the rules quite well though I think at least 2 investigator players makes for a better game.

The product itself is the usual high standard the FFG is known for. Very nice map tiles depict a variety of rooms, caves and garden areas which would also be very useful for a modern RPG. The miniatures themselves are pretty cool with the Investigators being a variety of characters from the 1920's and the monsters being Cthulu goodness or cultists and zombies. The rules are fairly easy to pick up and after utilising a dozen resealable plastic bags for the shite load of cards and tokens included I am very happy with my purchase.

Ali found on the FFG website an expansion which is interestingly print on demand so I may order that yet as I can see the game getting some mileage for sure.

I was however missing a zombie! Even though I can just grab one from the hundreds of prepainted D&D minis I have I will mention it to FFG in an email though I'm not too concerned of the outcome.

So if you want to play a very story driven board game full of investigation and creepy monsters go get a copy or for those who can come over and have a game ;) Hopefully means I wont always have to play Keeper as its not like I don't GM enough =P

Didn't see that coming - High Lords

After a delayed flight I finally got home in the early hours of the morning from my Sydney excursion to High Lords of Terra.

Cody/Coldbane and I had flown over on thursday to spend a few days with Richard/Psyche who I have gamed with for 10+ years I think and attend the Lords and High Lords event. After a relaxing thursday and some rain soaked site seeing on friday we were ready for the weekend and the amazing venue where it was held.

At the Blacktown Workers club - a multistory complex of buffet restaurants(cue Homer Simpson drooling), pokies halls and event rooms we had the Ballroom for the gaming filled with terrain covered tables.

Saturday morning saw the Eldar host go head to head against Sheldon MacGowan's amazing looking Space Wolves. Now I hadn't played against the puppies before and two Longfang units and a large Thunderwolf squad was arrayed against me with grey hunters in support. The random objective mission got under way with my Eldar castling up on my left flank. Sheldon took control of the central and right objectives promptly rolling a 5 & 6 for there values. I expected the Wolves to be more aggresive but he was hesitant to face the Harlequins and Avatar in assault so I swept across the flank neutralising his Grey hunters and Longfangs on this side. His heavy weapons knocked my vehicles around a bit but failed to do any real damage and once my warwalkers came in on the opposiong flank I shot up the other longfangs and assaulted them for the rest of the game preventing them from shooting. The Nightspinners did well claiming models each round to their barrages and then the dangerous terrain rolls and whittled down wounds on the allocated Thunderwolves before the the 1 wound remaining lord charged the Avatar and got a spear in the face. I ended up taking most of the objectives by force and the wolves were left with only a couple of the embattled longfangs in combat with my krak grenade battered walkers so I got a 20 point win including my bonus objective.

Next after a table swap I played Stacey Daniels Ork horde. Orks the green bane of my 40k existence... It was a kill point game with dawn of war deployment and Stacey played smart stringing his mobs across the table weaving through cover. With multiple rockets pounding the grav tanks and Snikrot leading his Kommandos into a nasty multiple assault on my back lines and me doing not much else other than whittling away at the boyz I lost the game quite soundly. Full credit to Stacey for points denial and shrewd play - good hard game.

Finally on day 1 I played Dan Breeze and his Eldar in the Recon scenario. Knowing the capabilities of each others list we quickly got to battle and had a very fun game. Dan is an awesome relaxed guy and we exchanged casualties back and forth for most of the game clawing at each other as the turns continued past 5. I forget a lot of the details but it ended in a minor victory for me on turn 6? as my Pathfinders and Jetbikes crawled towards his lines and a mass volley of Scatter laser shots across the table from my Warwalkers finally felled Eldrad giving me the advantage.

After I loud and fairly entertaining trivia night we were back at it for day 2 where I drew Chee Wong and his awesome Deathwing and mixed Dark Angel force. It was Capture and Control spearhead deployment with 5 objectives and Chee won the roll with the placed objectives in his favour. He reserved his two rhino mounted units of a tac squad and a command squad while deploying his 3 Deathwing units, Ezekiel and a trio of Typhoon Speeders. The only LOS blocker was a quaint shack on a central hill and I used terrain as best I could to at least get cover saves from the numerous Krak missiles heading my way. Chee remained fairly static throughout the game as he had initial control of a couple objectives so after an initial webbing from the Nightspinners I set after his mobile targets. He did well early on knocking around my grav tanks and taking a couple wounds off the Avatar but as the game progressed a haze must have descended on the battlefield as other than a couple hail mary EML & Krak shots both our long range shots seemed to be fairly arse. My Harlequins ended up dashing around the central building an got to grips with a unit of Deathwing dealing with them well but after getting charged by Belial, his bodyguard and the newly appeared command squad they failed their hit & run!!! and got stuck in assault eventually getting the beat down. Following that I saturated his lines with as much fire as possible, the Warwalkers and Pathfinders taking a corner objective with good fire lanes on his troops. Chee did have control for most of the game but as the dice rolled for more turns he lost more models and I whittled him down including a massive struggle between my Farseer and his venerable Dread in assault and my Fire Dragons and Dire Avengers finally disposing of Belial in the centre. The game went bottom of the seventh turn where a final volley of combined fire saw me kill Ezekiel and his last tac marine pulling the game into a final draw with my bonus mission complete. The closest game of the tournament, Chee was great to play against and the banter was awesome of we cheered or despaired at the dice rolls in those last desperate turns, the draw a justified result.

Finally I played Glen Blair( yes another Glen B!) with his Eldar =) for the final misson of Kill the Fast Ones!( oh how the Australians cryed at this where the NZ players out there know this mission pretty damn well by now) We had really similar builds with Glen Blair having the only other Nightspinner I recall in the tournament. It started fairly evenly with KPs going back and forth but after Glen achieved a narrow 1 point lead the tide turned for my forces and I ended up with 22KP? to his 10! Many funny things happened in the game with his Banshees failing to caouse more than 1 wound on my Doomed Avatar who in turn failed to hit them at all! My Harlequins eating the Banshees for lunch then the Avatar rampaging across the table smashing grav tanks for kicks. Asurmen lead his force and it took an insane amount of fie to finally kill the shattered remnants of a Dire Avenger Squad, a 1 wound Asurmen and a 1 wound Farseer but I got there in the end. After I took the pulse laser and knocke around is Falcon he saw fit to tank shock across a hill in my deployment zone breaking my Dire Avengers and shifting my Pathfinders only to cause a S10 ram on my Nightspinner. Now you think that would have been bad but after the scream of grav engines and crash of hulls subsided my Spinner was only shaken while his Falcon exploded spectaculary. The game ended with Glen Blair only having an immobilised weaponless Wave serpent sitting on the board and his second Dire Avenger squad futily in combat with my Warwalkers to prevent a tabling! I ended up wit a sound 20 point win and there was some speculation amongst the surrounding tables as to what the final results would be once soft scores were revealed...

As the prize giving commenced Team NZ being Dave and Ben Foster, Cody and myself took a table near the front to hear the results. First the highly contested Open event was ran awarded with Ben taking out Best Painted, hurrah for Team NZ! Then we went onto the High Lords results. I would like to point out that as a rule it was stated that a player can only be awared one trophy with other awards dropping down to the next in line, so when I didnt get 'Best Painted' or 'Players Choice' as many other players had testified I would I was a little bit excited ;) As the podium was called and Shane Sofra with his beautiful Harlequin force was awarded second overall for High Lords, Richard announced that we had an overall winner and it was a Kiwi - ME!!! "Holy Shit!" I said and headed up to get my Chainsword trophy and Imperial Strongold box set and vouchers. I gave thanks on behalf of the NZ contingent and that ended an awesome and suprising event.

Looking at final results and not to take anything away from the other winners but I also did get the top votes for Players Choice and the Best painted for High and Open(I painted Codys Dark Eldar) so Glen FTW I say ;)

I would like to say thanks to Alex and the guys doing data at the tournament and a HUGE thankyou to Richard Nelly/Psyche and his family for housing and feeding Cody and myself for six days, you guys are all awesome =D

Also a big hello to Dave and Ben Foster, great catching up with you guys again and look forward to seeing you at future NZ events. And congratulations to Cody who got 7th overall out of 49 players in the Open!!! Awesome result for the deviants from the webway I say.

High Lords this weekend

This weekend sees myself and Cody/Coldbane off to Sydney to be graciously hosted by Richard/Psychenz for Lords and High Lords of Terra. I have been looking forward to this for a while and the few days before and after the event off work will be great!

I will be taking a tweaked version of the list I used at NZ Masters in December where I placed 2nd overall =D Now that we are several months along from that, the lay of the land is a little different with Dark Eldar and Grey Knights rampaging across tabletops in increasing frequency. I have played against Dark Eldar a lot in the past few months with Cody working the bugs out of his list and coming up with a nice effective force able to tackle all missions. Grey Knights have been an opponent a feew times and I havn't done amazingly against them but my opponent Ryan knows hos my list works and targets Nightspinners with extreme predjudice.

Even though I loathe to say it, I am feeeling the codex creep a lot when faced by these two books. With the Dark Eldar having similar capabilities but with cheaper points costing and the psychic might of the Eldar race a collection of parlour tricks against the Emperors armoured sorcerers my beloved Eldar are facing imminent retirement on the display shelf while I look towards refining my Coteaz list more in the future.

But I still field my odd little list with delight and often cunning so here it is.

Farseer, both wards, stones, spear, doom and fortune
Avatar of Khaine

6 Fire Dragons inc DBF Exarch in EML Wave Serpent
10 Harlequins inc TM, SS, DJ, 8 kisses and 1 fusion pistol

3 Jetbikes inc cannon
3 Jetbikes inc cannon
5 Dire Avengers in EML Wave Serpent
5 Pathfinders

3 Scatter Laser War Walkers
Nightspinner
Nightspinner

Hopefully I should perform fairly well as the mix of missions are not too taxing mentally and neither are the bonus missions. I think a lot of opponents may underestimate the list and its capabilities and get suprised by its performance. At least that seems to be what has happened at past events. Whatever the outcome it will be awesome to play against some new people and against a high caliber of opponent in the High Lords invitational.

Tonight I shall perform some minor repairs on my Eldar and rapidly finish final touches on Cody's Dark Eldar. Then Thursday morning first thing, we wing our way to Sydney. Heres hoping for some good fun to report back on and a better performance for the space elves then their fantasy cousins ;)

Maelstrom arrives - Coteaz on the horizon

Yesterday was a good mail day.

I arrived home from work in this horrific weather to find safe and sound and dry! my Maelstrom order from the final ROW discount and an amazon package.

In the Maelstrom box was the start of my Coteaz list which is still a little bit in the WIP stage. 3 Chimera, 1 Stormraven and my first Finecast model Coteaz himself. A quick check of Coteaz finds him in good condition is is encouraging in relation to some of the negative feedback seen online.

So now I have 4 Chimera, Stormraven, Coteaz, 10+ Karskin inc 3 melta and 6 hotshot which will be warriors, 2 Jokaero(thank you Pete)and a box of varied imperial models I have collected over the years because I thought they were 'cool'.

This project can wait until post Call to Arms when I have finished my painting projects for my mates which is proving to be quite enjoyable.

In the Amazon parcel was the Pathfinder RPG GM screen which I got pretty cheap considering the US dollar is pretty crap right now. I was impressed that I now will rarely need to consult the main rulebook for anything other than spells as the screen has everything I want including xp values on it. Hopefully in the next couple days the Advanced Players Guide arrives as well having had rave reviews online, we shall have to see...

Screw you guys I'm going back to Ulthuan! =)

The weekend saw a lot of gaming first and foremost being Horned Rat. As a continuation to Runefang earlier in the year all the teams had the same territories that we ended with as well as the new 'Slippery' Lizard nation being attached to the board.

I could go into detail of glorious battles and tales of heroics but that wouold be a vast exageration as Team Resplendant got well and truly stomped into elven paste! Not that our efforts were all poor, we managed the 'occasional' win and draw but with the forces of destruction rampaging over our carefully manicured borders and efforts at diplomacy ignored by the vile skaven(fair enough though) our flower beds were stomped over, our groves cut down for warmachines and our elegant cities razed to the ground. We ended up being forced into an single empty plain with not a tree or arcane nexus in sight.

We came dead last and my mages are hastily crafting a portal back to the homeland but it was still a highly enjoyable thrashing. I got to play against all different armies which was great including Dwarves which I had not fought against in years. I do think that having 40 spearmen was awesome especially when you get Mindrazor working on them and would recommend 5 Elyrian Reavers with musician, bows and spears to High Elf players as in most games they proved highly annoying for the enemy, claiming a handful of warmachines and lone enemy.

Where does this leave my High Elves? Well I havn't really been impressed with them overall but found them very good to learn 8th ed with. I do really like the model range and will eventualy... get more painted but for now I think it's time for a change.

I have a decent collection of Vampire Count models so will start having some fun games with them. They are based around much earlier editions of the game though so I have to invest in a large amount of wonderful ghouls. I will be using a 'killy' Vampire though as with the High Elves it's what I prefer. Empire also visually and playstyle appeals but it's a lot of models to invest and paint so they may not ever happen but I can always include the models in my Vampire army as Undead counterparts. In the meantime I'll see how the walking dead go...

Storm of Magic Advance Orders

Yesterday afternoon GW put the Storm of Magic stuff up for advance order - at last! With this being the first of their new release schedule formula we only get a couple of weeks to salivate over the new toys before they're released.

However my actual point of comment is - I actually find the majority of prices for the new kits fairl reasonable. Now some may disagree as by all means do but looing at the prices of things over the last couple years and the stupid prices of re-released finecraft models I find the new batch ok.

The terrain especially is a high point for me. I expected the kits to be $110+ NZD and was suprised that they are 'only' $72.50 NZD. I will be adding both sets to my collection in the near future for sure. The new Mage models in Plastic!? are only $25.50 each and pretty nice models at that, if they are indeed plastic as opposed to Finecraft I have no issue with that, plastic FTW please. I'm looking at getting the Necromancer to reboot my languishing Vampire Count collection and a friend is most probably using the Tzeentch Sorcerer as a Daemonic Herald.

The book is an expected price but looks like fun. I like monsters and the inclusion of them in all armies as well as some classic beasties returning makes this very appealing for me.

As an advance order I will probably only order the new spell card set as I have High Lords in Sydney later in July but overall I'm an interested customer for sure. If it ends up falling into the pit alongside Apocalypse, Spearhead and Battle Missions so be it but these releases pave the way for impressive new kits(terrain)and thats all good with me.

Coteaz list

This is a WIP list for my Inquisition build, other than being very good on the tabletop it's very appealing to me from a fluff and hobby perspective.

Some of the choices are not optimal and I know I don't have any of the amazing bullshit Psyflmen Dreadnoughts but this a list with units in mind I will convert/paint up. And some of its still bloody good.

Coteaz 100
Ordo Xenos Inquisitor, Psyker, Rad grenades, power armour 78

Techmarine, rad grenades, force halberd 110
Callidus Assassin 145

7 DCA(death cult assassins), 3 Crusaders, warrior w/meltagun 164
7 DCA(death cult assassins), 3 Crusaders, warrior w/meltagun 164
3 Multimelta Servitors, 2 Jokaero, 1 DCA, 1 Crusader, Mystic in Chimera 195
10 Warriors, 3 meltaguns, 6 hotshot lasguns in Chimera 155
9 Psykers, 1 warrior in Chimera 149

Stormraven with Typhoon ML and Twin Plasma Cannons 230
Land Raider Redeemer with Multimelta, psybolt ammo 260

The Techmarine and Ordo Xenos each team up with the assault focused DCA/Crusader units in the Stormraven and Land Raider Redeemer. Coteaz bunkers with the servitor/Jokaero Chimera. Melta and Psyker squads go roaming in their Chimeras. Callidus is just fun and goes after backline units. The Mystic can enable a secure Deepstrike of the Stormraven if needed and visually will form a nice retinue for Coteaz with his 'bodyguard' DCA and Crusader.

The hotshot on the warriors is so I can model a squad which can be used as an imperial guard vet squad and also the Psyker unit could be used for IG. Will probably model the Techmarine into a high ranking tech adept. I may build a flamer focused Deradnought to drop with the Stormraven and model it as the tech adepts creation.

All this will have to wait til the Dark Eldar and Sisters are done but at least I can look forward to it and tweak the list in the meantime.

WIP - Dark Eldar

So I am in the process of painting Coldbane/Cody's Dark Eldar army for use in Sydney next month. My own Craftworld Eldar need some minor repairs and I'm going to rebase the vehicles.

I plan on getting through the bulk of the Dark kin in the next couple weeks so I might have a little time to paint some more High Elves before Horned Rat in Wellington but we'll see =/

I apologise in advance for a couple photos, as I finish bases and full squads I'll repost better ones.

I really enjoyed the Venoms and this has encouraged me to get the 2 remaining Raiders and 2 Ravagers completed before the Razorwing arrives and a handful of Wyches and Warriors are on the painting table basecoated.

More to come...

Post Retribution

To all those that made the trip to my place on Saturday a big thank you for a great fun day of 40K and I hope to see some of you again up this way.

There will be some in game photos soon but I'm having slow net issues so they may be a few days away when my broadband resets for the month.

Thanks to Wil for TO'ing the event and it was good to see some people who shy away from tournament style proceedings get stuck in and play against some new people.

My Eldar performed fairly well coming 3rd out of the 10 forces. I went to battle against Ryan Lister's Grey Knight list and after trying to steal a 6th turn draw in a random objective game the dice didn't favoured me and a 7th turn saw my contesters destroyed. An entertaining couple rounds of combat saw his Brother Champion skirt past the Avatar in a Bastion to engage my Farseer in melee. To my disgust he wounded the Seer and succesfully 'popped' him with his annointed blade - so much for Runes of Warding. However the Avatar took offence the following round and stomped the Champion narrowly avoiding his Heroic Sacrifice attack.

Next was the infamous 'kill the fast ones' but with the heavy terrain I had set on the tables and smoking and flaming rules the heavy mech lists were given some relief. I played Craig Stewart with his Ultramarine list. A rematch of sorts as we had played each other with very similar lists at 40k Masters in December. After exchanging blows across the crystal infused chaos desert I won though failed to eliminate a single pesky terminator from his originally 10 man unit and didn;t get a bonus point for most expensive unit though after he had 'gated' the surviving termies away from the harlequins he had gunned down the clowns to get a bonus point off me.

Finally I played James Stewart with his Ultramarine bike force - MEQ day. I have played Jimmy a few times so it was nice to play the final game with him. We fought over the Imperial airfield complete with 3 stationary valkries. The mission was for 5 set objectives and 5 chosen kill points. After a few short rounds of exchanging fire and insults Jimmy decided he wasn't going to win but would be damned if he 'bent over' and gave me a massacre so played well and avoided being tabled no matter how hard I tryed.

In regards to my list it performed well as it did at Masters with the NightSpinners being a fantastic nuisance for my opponents - probably why Ryan purposely destroyed them so early in the game as he has had to endure them before. The build can complete all missions but I am finding it harder vs the newer codex books.

I play against Dark Eldar a lot as Cody/Coldbane perfects his lists and have fought the new Grey Knights a couple times and now as much as I hate to admit it, I am feeling codex creep more and more. However the Eldar will not be shelved and I am entertaining a slightly different list which eliminates some of the static elements in my list and is the 'attack from all directions' list I've wanted to use for a while now. I'll hopefully play with it over the weekend and let you know how it goes.

After Retribution I played some more games on Sunday with guests who had stayed the night. I tryed out a list for the Grey Knights I had been thinking about since I first got the codex - the Coteaz all inqusition build and damn it was fun... more to come.

Retribution Home Team

Next Saturday I host Retribution a one day 40k tournament with 10 players which my good friend Wil Hoverd has organised.

I of course will be playing and will be taking my Eldar into battle again. My list is a variation of what I used at NZ Masters in December where I got 2nd (imagine my delight =D). This build has the 'fat' trimmed out of it and is pretty functional.

Avatar
Farseer, both Runes, Spear, Stones, Doom, Fortune

10 Harlequins including Troop Master, Shadow Seer, Death Jester and Harlequin kisses
6 Fire Dragons, inc Exarch with Dragon Breath Flamer
Wave Serpent with Twin Eldar Missile Launcher, Shuriken Cannon, stones

3 Jetbikes, cannon
3 Jetbikes, cannon
5 Dire Avengers
Wave Serpent with Twin Eldar Missile Launcher, Shuriken Cannon, stones
5 Pathfinders

Night Spinner, Shuriken Cannon
Night Spinner, Shuriken Cannon
3 War Walkers with Scatter Lasers

I have played variations of this over the past few months but have come back to this core list simply because I know how to use everything in it fairly well. Sure there are a couple 'weak' choices or wasteful upgrades here and there but I find everything very useful so well see how they go next weekend against the varied lists attending.

PS - The Nightspinner in the pic above will have a cannon attached instead of catapults by play time ;)

OMG WTF GW!!!

So after waiting anxiously over the weekend to see how GW's new terms & conditions would effect Maelstrom and Wayland I now slump my shoulders in dissapointment.

I have read the comments on WAU with people claiming their time for GW is over but is that the answer? Well kind of...

What this has done for me is restrict heavily all the future projects I have rumbling about in my creative mind. That Inquisition focused GK list with heavily converted Stormraven, the Imperial Guard high tech PDF force to mix with the GK and go nicely with the terrain I'm working on for Retribution, the Fantasy army alternative for High Elves I can't decide on, the amazing new Dark Eldar Pain Engines and Flyers I want to tinker with and any upcoming wonderful toys that GW will release will all now be most likely shelved for the forseeable future, very sad.

However after fuming about it all day at work and even explaining the horror to my sympathetic staff I came to a realisation of sorts. I have boxes of sprues, assembled miniatures and bitz galore that I should suck it up and sort them out and see what armies I can get to a playable level.

I have numerous Chaos Marine models including a fully converted Thousand Sons army a good friend gave to me while he lives in London which is crying out for some love and attention from my paint sets. Also the FW Keeper of Secrets my wifer Ali bought me for my birthday.

A variety of 'Imperial' models both Imperial Guard and Marine including 3 Valkyries, Infantry, marine vehicles and lots of varied marine infantry.

3+ sets of AoBR Orks still on sprues plus some Mega Nobz I got cheap.

3000+ points of Necrons I share with Stu/Tiros waiting patiently for a new codex

Enough Tau from a couple owners to get a working force in action.

My old Vampire Counts army which needs bringing up to 8th ed standard, shame I have so many skeletons and Zombies instead of ghouls.

Literally hundreds and Orcs and Goblins in various states of quality needing only the touch of super glue and the new army book to get them back on the table.

An Ogre army a friend has left here for 3+ years barely assembled

Cody/Coldbane's Warriors of Chaos collection he scored cheap of trademe

..and those are just the things I can think of without going out to the gaming room to look.

All a bonus of being the local gaming host I guess.

So what do readers think? Instead of wallowing in a pit of retail despair what forces should I get into working order as an alternative to my pointy eared armies - Eldar and High Elves.

Preparing for Retribution!

I have not made a post for a few days but I assure you I have not been remiss in my painting.

With Retribution 2 weeks away and myself as the host I have been performing maintenance on terrain and making some new pieces for the 5 tables.

I have completed 15 jungle pieces which I can add to some smaller bases I already had. If I have time I may even make some larger pieces as I've got the techniques sorted out.

I also painted my Arcane Ruins set which I think will be added to in the future as they are such nice useful variable terrain. I considered basing the Ruins but decided against for now as I have yet to decide which of my terrain 'sets' they'll join.

Last night I finished repainting my Imperial Bastions. They were a simple drybrushed grey but as I have a new Imperial army in mind to slowly work on, I want a specific look to their environment. I finished the Honoured Imperium set last week and they go nicely together.

The paint scheme is Khemri brown base, Dheneb stone overbrush, heavy skull white drybrush/overbrush, devlan mud wash into recesses. The Aquilas and Bastion floor/doors are tin bitz.

More terrain to come soon...

Awesome vid especially for the Monday night team

Go watch this if your a gamer

http://vimeo.com/23248158

So well done

The First Retribution

Saturday the 28th of May sees what was going to be a casual 40k day with a couple new guests from Wellington up at my place become something a little different.

With all organisational effort under control of Mr Hoverd I will be hosting the first 'Retribution' mini tournament!

With a cap set at 10 players(well see how it goes) we will be having a great day of 3 competitive games of 40K with a cash prize on the line ;) Wil is kindly going to use some of the players entry fee to feed and water us all as we play, thankfully I have a large BBQ.

With 5 tables semi accounted for I have been motivated to do some needed maintenance of my varied terrain collection. Last night I painted up the set from Honored Imperium in nice marble white tones. I'll finally paint the special craters from when Planetstrike was released and with Cody/Coldbane having purchased a Skyshield I'll get stuck into that too.

I plan on themeing all the tables so to play over well have the following.

Ruined Imperial city on my home made modular terrain boards
Imperial City with roman/marble theme and plant life
Imperial airfield with 3 Valkyries
Ancient chaos temple complex
and most likely a mixed fantasy terrain table.

I must say I'm really looking forward to it and we'll be using some of the well loved scenarios from the last years Wellington Tournament scene that most of the attending players are familiar with. I'll get to have what should be 3 really good games and work the fat out of my Eldar list I'm taking to High Lords in Sydney in July.

If anyone is interested in maybe coming to say hello let me know, I have had a smaller mini tourney at my place before and the double garage and my gaming building/room should accomadate all the players fairly well. For a home run event should be a blast just hope the weather is at least agreeable.

Painting - Archon Coldbane

Put the finishing touches on Coldbane's 'Archon Coldbane' last night while that little wedding was on the tele. Coldbane says he probably won't be using the soultrap in game but it looks cool and there is plenty of room for a pistol under the cloak.

The agoniser and arm are from the plastic witch sprue and the base is an Iron Halo Battlefield of Thran one I had in a bitz box.

The rest of his Dark Eldar force will be on flagstoned bases so the slightly raised more detailed base just adds to the Hq choice.

Painting WIP

For my Eldar I only really have to paint up my Striking Scorpions so thought I'd start trying some paint schemes out. I originally was going to paint them a dark tin bitz based 'Predator' inspired fashion but thought it would look horrible alongside the rest of my arctic based force. Looking at the Warmachine Retribution of Scyrath book I painted this fella up and quite like him.

Didn't take long either which was nice.

I also have to get stuck into Hoverd's Sisters and Coldbane's Dark Eldar.

I was going to go for a dark red industrial tone for the Dark Eldar but with High Elves and Sisters I'm already painting a lot of red. Looking at the Raiders and with some freehand in mind for the hulls I quikly painted this guy last night. Obviously Coldbane has to approve but he's pretty much leaving it up to me.

I'm all inspired now to paint again following Runefang and with Dark Eldar, Sisters and probably more High Elves to work on I have a nice selection to work on.