Battle Report: Heavy Tournament 11/2009

Another month, another tournament. At least this month I remembered to bring my army, unlike October...

This month was a heavy tournament so since Jwolf wanted to run my 'crons and Minus had my demons for the fantasy 'ard boys this weekend, I decided to play the Templars. It's close enough to Christmas right?

Emperor's Champion, Accept Any Challenge

Terminator Marshall with duel lightning claws

Gray Knight Grandmaster

10x Crusaders, melta, power fist, rhino

10x Crusaders, melta, power fist, rhino

10x Crusaders, melta, power fist, rhino

5x Assault Terminators, 2 hammers, furious charge

Land Raider Crusader

Vindicator

Vindicator

ROUND 1 - Imperial Guard

Pitched Battle
Primary: Annihilation
Secondary: Unit in opponents deployment zone
Tertiary: Unit in own deployment zone with none of opponents
Bonus: All HQs are still alive at the end of the game

For round 1, I was paired up against Josiah and his completely borrowed guard army. I knew I was in for a shitty game and it did not disappoint. His list consisted of all the most broken units in the guard book... 2 demolishers, an executioner, psychic battle squad, a ton of vets, valkyrie, 40 plasmas, 20 meltas, etc. He deployed spread out on his line as would be expected. My list is not really geared to handle this sort of thing so I decided just to pick a flank and attack it.

Though I had high hopes when after the first turn the worst result I had was an immobilized rhino... but guard is still guard and all I had left at the end of the game was the marshal and the grandmaster. I denied him extra points, and that was good enough for me. 12-6 loss.

ROUND 2 - Eldar
Spearhead
Primary: Capture and Control
Secondary: Destroy all of opponents heavy choices
Tertiary: Destroy all of opponents fast attack choices
Bonus: non-scoring unit within 6" of opponents long table edge
Bonus: 2 non-scoring units in opponents deployment zone

Round 2 I was paired up against Jim and his eldar. Jim is always a fun opponent and I was relieved to not have to play against guard or orks, which I find to be the least fun to play against. I don't think Jim has much experience at using eldar to it's most cheesy and chose to go first. He had 3 lance serpents, a falcon, a prism, a wraith lord, eldrad, a second farseer, some dragons, some guardians, and some pathfinders.

I wasn't really sure how the game would end up, but with him going second I had some high hopes. I do have some trouble with super mobile armies though. I moved forward and tried to shoot away the wraith lord since he would give me some serious trouble if he wanted to assault some tanks. I was eventually able to kill him and worked my way toward his objective which was mostly unprotected.
In the end I was able to contest my own objective and wipe out the models protecting his for a 1-0 victory.

ROUND 3 - Orks
Pitched Battle
Primary: Seize Ground
Secondary: secretly choose an opponents troop choice, kill it.
Tertiary: I don't remember...
Bonus: None

The last round I was paired up against Ben and his ork army. Just my friggin luck, guard and orks in the same tournament... suckage. I have no idea what he had really other than a bike squad with a warboss, a bunch of nobs in a truck, a battle waggon, some orks in another truck, a bunch of lootas, a shock attack gun with gretchin wounds, and a bunch more orks. *SNORE*
Since it was orks, I made the fateful decision to hold my army in reserve (as he won the roll and chose to go first). That would give him a couple turns to get to my side of the board and I hoped for a little reserve luck to get my army in early. My luck failed. Only a couple squads came in turn 2, and sporadically for the rest of the game. My deathstar unit and a squad of mooks were ready come in turn 4, except for my dice coming up snake eyes. Since he had every objective at that point, I was down to a single immobile Vindicator with no weapons (and 2 squads not coming in until turn 5), I conceded the game. Goddamn Orks. I wasn't thinking and should have deployed the Land Raider, he had no answer for it really...

Well, at least the game against eldar was enjoyable.

Red Scorpions Update

I really buckled down before my last game against Jwolf to try and have at least a coherent army. I worked late into the night trying to get all of the yellow done on all of the models. Here's what it looks like now.

Since the painting competition is over, I should have more time to work on them and maybe get a squad finished up.

Badab War Plantstrike: Red Scorpions vs Lamenters

Here's a game from quite a while back, my first planetstrike game actually. The game was against Aventines Lamenters. I took a bunch of termies, 3 vindicators, librarian terminator, culln, and a plasma dev squad. I don't remember a whole lot about Chris' army, but I do remember he deep struck his land raider! This post wont be much of a report, just an excuse for pictures mostly.
My army was beefier than I'd expected it would be and I was really ripping his army to shreds. I had to really cut it out early to make it more fun. After the first couple of turns I'd killed nearly 2/3 of his army and decided I'd just use my terminators for the rest of the game. In the end, all that was left of the Lementers was his commander riding a jet bike. A Scorpions Victory.

Building Prowess: Magnetizing Wings

A few weeks ago, Jwolf asked me to magnetize his demon prince who was having some bad wing issues. One of his wings had broken completely off and he was looking for an easier way to transport him. I of course agreed, I like a good challenge (not that I thought it would be too hard).

The break was not really super clean so I grinded it down a bit on both sides with my dremel. Because it was a fully painted model, I really had to take my time to be sure it would rejoin cleanly. I decided early to extend the wingspan slightly with the magnets and repair the spaces using green stuff. I tried 4 magnets on each side at first, but it wasn't quite powerful enough so I added two more.
Once the magnets were on and the fit was good, I mixed some green stuff and wrapped it around the joint. I wanted to create something of a socket on the wings that would overlap where they connected to the body.
Once the putty set I sanded it to smooth it out, then did my best to match the paintjob Jwolf had used. I'm happy with the outcome.
Wolf is very happy he doesn't have to deal with re-gluing it or trying to find a way to transport it.

The Iron Bevo: 99% complete

There is less than a week left in the competition and I'm almost finished with the Iron Bevo. There are just a few tiny details left to do before Thursday when I bring it to the store to stay (though the contest doesn't actually end until Sunday).

Not the view you'd want to see on the battlefield.

And in the spirit of the project, I also decided to build a piece of terrain for one of the game boards at Battleforge. Originally, I'd built the entire sooner schooner sans just the canopy and wheels, but decided in the end (after I set it on fire) to just use a couple pieces.


This project was really fun and I've been fighting the urge to do 2000 points of normal guard with this scheme... maybe something in the future. I will try to get pictures of the other entries for the contest.

Chainfist!!!

Everyone should go check out Mkerr's new blog, chainfist.com. He has some great insights into the gaming world.

Big-ass Painting Challenge: 80% Complete

So it's time for the first real reveal of my current project. I'm two weeks into the competition and I'd say it's close to 80% complete. I'm not going to go into detail about the techniques and colors, that will be a BoLS article later. I figured today was a fitting day for the reveal.

Without further adieu, here it is!

The "Iron Bevo!"


HOOK 'EM HORNS!!!