Monday 27 April 2015

Vanquish 2015 - a 1750 point tournament

So, despite a horrific cold which has made me take a day off from work today (the horror!) I made it out to my tournament this weekend. I took my Night lords CSM list which is not terribly competitive but I'm sure a good general could do quite well with them. A good general I am not...

Here's the army:
The list consists of:

Chaos Lord with Jump pack, sigil of corruption and lightening claws + mark of nurgle
12 Raptors with lightening claw melta bomb champion + 2 meltaguns + mark of nurgle
4 x 5 CSM with a plasma gun each. 2 units are in rhinos with twin linked bolter and dirge casters
5 Havocs with 3 lascannons and 1 flakk missile launcher + mark of nurgle
3 obliterators with mark of nurgles
Heldrake stock
Helbrute with power scourge and plasma cannon
A trip lascannon predator

The tournament is run by Bristol Vanguard and you can find the rules pack for the event if you go to their forum which is linked from their main website. In short you could get a maximum of 25 points from 5 games purely by winning, which is 5pts for more than double the opponents score, 3pts for more but less than double, 2pts for a draw and 1pt if you lost but had more than half your opponents score. 0pts if you were crushed. Maelstrom was primary with standard secondary. In addition to this a maximum of 13 points were on offer for being fully painted, WYSWIG, not spamming etc (all detailed in the pack). And finally in each game you could play a vanquish secret objective, a picture of a couple of these are below:
These did not effect the score for the game but were added on to your tournament points with 12 points up for grabs in total.

This brought the overall score to 50 for the tournament. Points of the enemy destroyed were used to separate players on the same score.

The tournament was attended by about 74-80 people, A few people only played on the first day so numbers were consistent over the weekend. I attended last year which had 96 participants and came 86th with 16 points... Not a great showing! I won one narrowly and drew one with 3 crushing defeats...

This year I did a lot better!! I had to leave before the results were in, but unless I have been docked any points for my soft scores I think I scored 22 points! Which included 2 narrow wins and one narrow defeat with two crushing defeats, a marked improvement I'd say and I'm thoroughly pleased with it.

Below are a few pictures of the quality of tables you can expect at this event, they have put a huge amount of time and effort into them and they are a joy to play on.


Well done if you've got this far.... I'll do a quick run down of my games and then some more pretty pictures.

Game 1 vs Grey Knights and Imperial Knights Maelstrom mission 1 Dawn of War

2 dreadknights, an imperial knight, 10 terminators and a storm raven plus purifiers and a librarian... Ouch these guys demolished me, tabled me at the beginning of turn 5 and I was always on the back foot. I didn't play too badly I was just heavily mismatched with this guy, wonderful bloke called Simon though an chatted to him throughout the rest of the weekend. A 15-4 crushing defeat for me!

Game 2 vs Iron hands Maelstrom mission 6 Vanguard strike

Drop pod with sternguard plus librarian, Land raider crusader with 10 marines plus termie librarian, venerable dreadnought plus ironclad dreadnought, 2 5 man marines in a rhino and a razorback, 2 devastator squads with plasma cannon/lascannons. His static gun line was out of reach of my army for the most of the game and I baited him pretty well. In the end the cards swung in my favour and I got kingslayer because his librarian warlord rolled perils and blew his head off! a 14-9 noble victory for me and I got a secret vanquish objective too! A nice guy who's name escapes me... Sorry!

Game 3 vs Nids Maelstrom mission 2 Hammer and Anvil

I'm afraid I don't know much of nids so I can't recall these from memory, lovely army though, the chap (Tristan) had been playing them since their inception and had some lovely old models. I f**cked up bad on this one. Deployment killed me and once he had objectives and could keep drawing those cards I just couldn't get back in the game. I had a fun game but this was the only match I was kicking myself about after, I should have been competitive and I just sucked hard. A 14-3 crushing defeat, but not tabled!!

Game 4 vs Chaos Daemons and Chaos space marines Maelstrom Mission 3 Hammer and Anvil 

Belakor, 2 large squads of flamers one with a herald, soul grinder, plague big walking thing, tzeentch chariot, daemon prince, 10 cultists, vengeance weapon battery (did not shoot the entire game!), mauler fiend, and 10 plague bearers. This was played on the ork table picture up above. I got the side with the elevation and that won me the match I think. I was effectively able to dictate where he went with my threat arcs and my rhino speeding objective secured units got me the points I need. I gave up slay the warlord with a needless mistake which cost me 2 points as if he had not had that I would have won 6-2, as it was I won 6-3 . I destroyed 2 units in his army totalling some 300pts and he destroyed nearly 1000 of mine. I was proud I played to the mission and got the win, my best game overall I think. My opponent was also a very nice guys called Ben I should say.

Game 5 vs Necrons Decurion Maelstrom mission 4 Dawn of wat

2 squads of 15 warriors, a Lord in 1, 3 tomb blades, 5 wraiths, 1 spyder, 5 bases of little gribblies spider things (name escapes me), 5 immortals in a doom croissant, a transcendent c'tan and 1 lord of war obelisk thing. I actually think this was my second best game, I played the mission really well and didn't try to compete too much with the army. I lost out because of a bit of poor deployment at the start, I was worried about the c'tan and I wiped it second turn with havocs and obliterators but that left the wraiths to control that flank of the table. I lost 15-11 in the end with 3 raptors alive scoring me linebreaker. A nice guy called Moz and had hell of a blast.

Anyway I am impressed if you have made it this far so here are a few picture of my battles and some of the other armies on display that were incredible as always!





The Vanguard website will have loads of pictures up in the coming weeks and I'd recommend checking it out, if only for the Nagash/Transcendent C'tan conversion that I appear to have forgooten to take a picture of. It is stunning!

Thanks for reading and sorry for the massive post!

Rob

Friday 24 April 2015

Infinity Myrmidons - the Alpeh grow

I am at a tournament this weekend with my Night Lords army so I will probably be unable to update on Sunday. I wish I could promise I will take lots of notes and pictures but I am bloody hopeless when it comes to that!

I will attempt to at least get a copy of all the armies I play against and give you the results along with my general thoughts.

In the meantime I hope you will be happy to makes do with some more Infinity models!

I've finished painting and basing two of my Aleph Myrmidons, I have a couple more Myrmidons to go with these guys and the big Myrmidon bad-ass Ajax as well! That gives me a neat little 150 pt force which is brutal if it can get into close combat but packs excellent ranged fire power with combi rifles and the option of a spitfire if I need to. They also have relatively good armour (2) along with optical disruptors like a lot of Aleph that make them that much harder to hit.

If I don't have time on sunday for anything too intense I may just post up my planned 300 pt Infinity list to illustrate my ideas for this force.


Right, over and out and have a good weekend all.

Rob

Sunday 19 April 2015

Tidying up the shelves and Aleph break from cover!

Good evening fellow wargamers!

I've had a bit of a slack week modelling wise, but I did get round to organising my collection and clearing out my army shelves so I can more accurately see what I've got. I also managed to get a fair bit of undercoating done which helps me when I just pick up and paint without having a set plan, that usually get the ball rolling for a coordinated work effort. Here you can see my Black Templars, My militarum Tempestus, my currently built blood angels (10 sternguard and 10 vanguard veterans to come!), my imperial knight castigator, and a recent addition to my collection some second hand grey knights which need an extensive repaint but are otherwise in excellent condition!






I also managed to get a 5000pt kill points game in on saturday which I lost 14-9 but had a blast with a really nice guy called Will. This was played at the Old Duke in Bristol, an excellent Jazz pub that has gaming space upstairs where people can organise games through Bristol Vanguards website if you are ever around! Plus you can hear jazz through the floor and get a pint! Here's a quick snap of turn 2 or 3 in progress



In terms of painting work I have started on my second infinity Aleph Myrmidon model, I haven't got any WIP pictures but I have a few pics of my first Myrmidon before it was based, hopefully I will have the second one painted and based this week and then get a pair of the two together along with Ajax their commander in a half built state:



My current 150pt army consists of 4 Myrmidons with Ajax as their leader, I just couldn't say no to a giant angry man with a hammer! I have plans to buy some netrods and posthum proxy models so I can run them. These models allow you to have 3 models on the table but with one "consciousnes" operating them. This consciousness can jump from model to model operating orders in turn, it sounds tricky to utilise in game but the fluff concept is too tantilising to pass up!

Relatively short post today, if anyone has any questions or criticisms, or suggestions for the blog or my writing style as a whole, please do let me know, I'm hoping only to improve in all areas.

Over and out,

Rob



Sunday 12 April 2015

The Black Templars Rise - The Crimson Crusade

So! This is the first blog post proper. I've had a fairly busy week so lots of pictures to share and general musings on where I am heading in this hobby.

I'm currently working on my Black Templar army in 40K. I have that terrible habit that so many of us have, where my dreams, aspirations and ability to build models, far outstrips my ability to paint them in a timely and quality fashion...

In light of this I have made significant attempts to focus on armies and get them done before moving on to the next one. I have slightly compromised on quality of my painting with the Templar but the effect is, I think, still satisfactory enough to play with.

Here is a group shot of the army so far (with one additional figure now painted see below):



And here are the models I have painted since last Saturday:













The majority of this army was purchased second hand and repurposed so its been a good cheap project, but it has distracted from my more expensive blood angel and militarum tempestus projects which I will expand upon in my next post.

I've gone for a very red heavy theme with this army because of my fluff based direction with them. They are (as the title suggests) the Crimson Crusade. A seething mass of zeal intent on drenching their army in the blood of the Emperor's enemies. However this righteous fury is beset on all sides by the dark kindled flame of Khorne. Where does the desire to shed blood in purities name transform into blood for bloods sake? This Crusade walks that fine precipice, a knifes edge of faith and loyalty balanced against the base desire to kill and maim.

This fluff was inspired by the chained swords that the Black Templar specific kit comes with, which harks back to the World Eaters and their eventual descent into madness.

In the next few posts I will write up the army list for my Black Templars and produce some more photos of the individual squads. I will also review the Chapter Tactics and how I will run this army on the battlefield.

Hobby Time and Games

I love the modelling and painting aspect of this hobby, but I am terrible for actually playing the game itself. Last year I averaged less than a game a month, including attending a tournament of 5 games... This year I intend to average a game every month PLUS go to 2 tournaments.

I have my first tournament coming up in a fortnight which I will be taking my Night Lord Chaos Space Marines too. Here's a quick picture of this army (my only fully complete one):



I will go over this army and its toolkit closer to the tournament. These guys have played 3 games this year already and lost by a few points each time in the Maelstrom missions. I'm hoping to come out of the 5 games with at least 1 win and 1 draw or better and hopefully not be tabled like I was last year with my Dark Eldar....


Anyway, I feel I have splurged enough of my thoughts out for one session, I will definitely be sticking to updating on Sundays but don't be surprised if the odd mid week post flys out :)

Happy gaming and thanks for reading!

Rob

Saturday 4 April 2015

The Beginning

Encouraged by various other bloggers in the tabletop wargaming world I have decided to set out on my own bloggery adventure. The aim of this blog is to give me more incentive to be productive when I am on a lazy run with painting or assembling my armies and to perhaps muse on where I am in my hobbies as well opinions and rants on all matter of flotsam and jetsam from the world.

Currently I have a finished Night Lords army and work in progress Black Templars, Blood Angels, and Militarum Tempestus in the 40K universe and I am awaiting some Taghmata Omnissiah models to begin my foray into the 30K universe. In Infinity I have a tiny 150pt Aleph army on the go which I hope to be posting a lot about my learning curve game wise and model wise.

Additionally I will be posting up general bits of scientific information that I find interesting (as I am a researcher by trade and love sharing this interest) and I am also a keen Sci-Fi short story author so will likely be posting a few of them up for people to peruse and provide constructive criticism upon.

This poster is really just the impetus for me to get all my work and models in order and get a decent catalogue of good pictures together to share. I am very new to blogger as a tool so I will undoubtedly be messing around with the blog setting as infinitum so please do tell me if something works or doesn't.

Hopefully you'll enjoy this small slice of my life and follow me along the way. Initially I plan to post once a week probably on a Sunday.

See you soon!

R