Alpha Legion Rhino & Vindicator

Two new vehciles for my Alpha Legion army today, both of which came from job lots I got off ebay, so aren't constructed as I would have chosen, but still they add useful abilities to my army.

First off is this rhino, with way to many spikes for my liking, as well as an attached havoc launcher.  Rhino's aren't as good any more, but I still think a bargin for the points.

 

 

And secondly this origanl Vindicator based on the origanl rhino with metal add ons.  It was in a bad way when I got it and had been constructed very badly, the barrell is on at a funny angle and there were gaps everywhere.  Liquid green stuff filled in the gaps and I have to live with the wonky barrell.  Oddly I think this could do with a few more spikes, like the obliterators I painted last week this is more for functionallity than looking good on the shelf.

More Alpha Legion & The First Game of 6th

Been a bit quiet again recently, but I've finished another couple of units for my alpha legion force.

First up are the chosen from the dark vengeance boxed set.  Lovely models, although all the detail on them took abosolutely ages to paint.  Not sure I can acutally see myself using them that often though as with all the upgrades they end up costing a lot of points and still die relativly easily.

These obliterators are the opposite, not good models at all (though admitedly the were very cheap), but will find themselves in most games that I feild my chaos army in.

Yesterday also saw my first game of 6th 40K, with my space marines taking on my freinds chaos (neither of us have the new codex yet so he was using the old version).  It was an easy win for me, helped a lot by my opponents chaos terminators failing a 5" charge and them getting counter charged by my storm sheild termies.  These things are bound to happen more now though.  Very breifly I liked the new flyer rules, the new scenarios and the pyschic rules, wasn't so sure about random charge ranges and the new wound allocation rules.  Vehicles really do seem a lot weaker now with a lot going pop very easily, and alas my rhinos are nowhere near as useful (although still efficient enough at 35pts).  Although we didn;t use them in this battle I'm a big fan of the allies rules too.  Overall I'm happy enough, it's still the same game, but mixing it up ocasionally adds to the fun.

Warhammer 40K Dark Vengeance Limited Edition

So here we have the latest Warhammer 40K starter set from Games Workshop.  This is the limited edition version that contains an extra chaplain model for the Dark Angels.  I've had this for a few weeks now and have even painted up some of the figures, and it's fair to say I'm happy, this is good.

What do you get then? well I'm going to start with the paper an first the mini-rulebook.  If you have island of blood you'll know what to expect, it's an A5 size full colour rulebook containing all the rules from the expensive full rulebook but without the background sections, it's what I wanted, no more, no less, but I'm really glad it's included and I don't have to fork out for the big rulebook.  The other major booklet is a 50 page A4 'starter booklet' which contains an intro to 40K and 6 scenarios using the models in the book, it's a nice touch that the first 2 scenarios are one-player so you can get gaming striaght away without even the need for an opponent.  There is also a black and white booklet on how to construct the models, a couple of reference sheets (oddly one on card and one on paper) and a laminated colour card sheet with the rules for the chaplain on.

You also get the usual whippy sticks, a template sprue, a few dice and of course the miniatures;

The models are very nice and the set contains the start of  a chaos space marine army and a dark angels army.  The chaos side for me is the star of the set, with all of it being fantastic, the giant helbrute steals the show and is really rather awesome.  The chosen are also great with 5 of the 6 being indivual scuplts and the cultists are something a lot of poeple have been waiting for for a long time.

The dark angels aren't as interesting, but are still pretty good, with the standout pieces for me being the librarian and the limited edition chaplain (the only model in the set to come with a moulded base).  And whilst they might not be as exciting as the chaos, it really is a good start to an army or as in my case a good boost to an existing one.

It's not perfect though, there are some ways that the set could have been even better.  First off the two sides aren't closely balanced enough in points for my liking, with the dark angels enjoying a clear advantage, a simple switching of the librarian for a chaos sorcerer would have helped.  Secondly I find the choice of Dark Angels as apposed to vanilla marines very odd as it will limit their use for a lot of players and I think will reduce sales.  I plan just to add them to my army anyway and not worry overly about any inconsistant iconography (I'm sure there's an interesting story behind it in my chapters history), but I know a lot of people wouldn't be happy with that.  Finally only 6 D6's is just mean, really 6 dice, shameful.

not enough dice, sigh...

Overall it's a great value for money boxed set and a great intro to 40K.  The models are fantastic, the mini rulebook is great and the intro book is much better than the previous versions.  The limited edition seems to be sold out already, but the normal edition that lacks the chaplain will be nearly as good and a bit cheaper.

White Dwarf 394 & Wargames Illustrated 300

It's been a big month with my two wargaming magazines, lets start as usual with White Dwarf.

White Dwarf 394 (actually I now can't see that number anywhere so WD Oct 2012) is the first of a new era, with a complete redesign and an increase in size and price.  There is a lot of good here, it's a big improvement.  I like the new styling, I like that black library, forgeworld and fantasy flight games are given a proper place.  At the end of the mag is a nice section of whats going on in WD, the design studio, black libray and forgeworld, with the sort of design notes that have been missing of late.  Jervis Johnson, Jeremey Vetcock and John Blanche (blanchistu is spectacular this month) get columns and there are quite a few examples of poeples models and conversions.  A battle report of course features and there is a nice article called the rivals which pits two warhammer generals against each other in army design.  It's not all good though the painting section is still very basic with little in the way of techniques, and the biggy is that the new releases section takes up a whooping 50 pages! A full third of the space.  It's definatly better, but not quite yet fixed.

It also comes with a fre Horus Heresy poster which is OK if not spectacular.

Wargames Illustrated celebrates its 300th issuse by producing a huge issuse of just shy of 300 pages!  This months theme is last stands and the mag has many many articles on famous and not famous last stands throughout history.  Flames of war only gets a quick look in where they explore the new plastic starter set (which I am tempted by), but pretty much every era gets at least one article.  I've not had a chance to read it all yet, but it's very impressive eye candy and the articles I have read have been up to the usual standard (including an interesting one trying to sperate the myth of the 300 spartans from reality).

More Alpha Legion legion

I've been absent from here for a couple of weeks, with real life getting in the way and having a couple of posts that just can't quite seem to get themselves finished off.  But nonetheless I've returned with reinforcements for my alpha legion.  First off some much needed elite forces in the form of a Terminator squad.  I've mixed in a couple of pieces I had spare from my chaos lord.  There's a couple of chainfists and a lightning claw mixed in, but game wise they will all count as having a powerfist (their weren't enough in the kit).

I've also finished my first models from Dark Vengeance (thoughts coming soon), which is a squad of the new cultists armed for ranged warfare.

 

Below is a pic of my new army now and its finally starting to get somewhere!

A Few More 40K bits

An assortment of recently finished projects today, all for warhammer 40K.

Starting off with these 5 fire dragons with exarch, which takes my fire dragon squad upto 10 and enough firepower to melt just about anything!

Another squad is completed with these two terminators taking my 'normal' terminator squad upto a full 10 men.

And finally two squads of Imperial Guard infantry to form the core of my allied detachment. These came off ebay cheap, but one of the downsides of this is that they're not put together as well as I would have liked, but they're OK and will hopefully do their job well.

Navwar WW2 Late War Japanese Starter Set

Another project that I've forced myself to finish off as dark vengeance arrives (which it has, and very good it is too) is my Japanese Late war starter set from Navwar, as usual in 1:3000 scale.  The ships have actually been finished for a couple of months, but I just hadn't got around to basing them.

The japanese are very good in victory at sea and benefit hugely from the poor points system as in each of the 5 brackets they can field efficient ships.  It also helps that the Yamato class battleships are the most powerful in the game.

As all the Navwar starter sets this one is good value, although I'd have prefered one less carrier and another battleship, but thats just me, I like battleships a lot.

 The big boys of the set the Battleships, from left to right the Nagato, The Ise and the Yamato.  Although as I already have a Yamato this model has been christened the musashi.  The Ise is a fascinating ship that is half battleship and half aircraft carrier!

The set also contains 3 full carriers of various sizes, the Kaiyo, the Shinyo and the Unryu.

On the left we have two Takao heavy cruisers and on the right we have two oyodo class light cruisers. 

 And finally we have 4 akitsuki class destroyers and 4 kagero class destroyers.

A Few Thoughts On The Dreadball Kickstarter

Kickstarter seems to be the in thing at the moment, with many gaming companies running successful campaigns to launch new games/ranges.  The one that is interesting/tempting me is the dreadball one from Mantic Games. 

The first question I had was why on earth kickstarter? the game was clearly already done, designed and the models produced.  One of the earliest 'stretch' goals was the refbot which was in the rules and the model had already been produced and an example painted up.  It all sort of looked like a bit of a con.  Also the deal at the beginning frankly didn't look that good at the $150 'striker' level that the campaign has been centered around.  But a lot of this was because I didn't understand how kickstarter works, Mantic sensibly started out not promising too much so that they could add more stuff in later, and we are at the point now in the goals where things like Hex-bases seem to be genuinely stuff they couldn't do without this upfront funding.

Onto the game itself, firstly I want to give big respect to Jake Thornton (the writer) for addressing the big question over on his blog, that is of course, have you just copied Games Workshop's classic fantasy sports game Blood bowl?  And whilst it is aimed to appeal to the same people that like Blood Bowl Jake has purposely designed it to not be blood bowl.

How the game works is slowly coming out and it has some interesting mechanics, I like the standardised class system, but the big one for me is no resets after scoring.  This is massive and will add a whole new layer to the game, no good scoring if the opponents can easily score straight back again.  I'm also a fan of 'sudden death' and that there will always be a winner.  It can be difficult to see how it all adds together at the moment and I hope a video of someone actually playing turns up before the kickstarter ends.

That's the positive, there is also one negative for me, and that's the selection of the standard fantasy races as teams (although I understand that that is to match the races from warpath), as this makes it look a lot more like blood bowl and opens up the copying accusations.  Having said that some of the MVP's starting to be shown are taking it more in the sci-fi direction I like to see.





In the end it's very, very tempting, and the deal is starting to look good, at the time of writing you get all this for $150, with 28 days to go, and hopefully many more stretch goals to be reached:

Finally The Last Lot Of Boers

With dark vengeance looming and a whole influx of new models joining the queue I've been attempting to clear off some half done and nearly completed projects from my desk.  One of these are these last 9 stretlets 1:72 scale boers that have sat around for many many months half done, but finally here they are.

White Dwarf 393 & Wargames Illustrated 299

Well what do we have here, with the release of the new Dark Vengeance set I was of course expecting coverage of such a momentus release, but alas what we get is what feels like a giant advert, with little of real value.  We start off of course with the new releases section with pics of the new models.  We then get an intro to the new starter set and then a bit of background on it.  Next we get a large article which gives brief battle reports on all 6 of the scenarios from the new box!  It's overkill and disappointing.  Next is a terrain 'showcase' (read advert), and then a painting showcase showing some alternate schemes for models in the box.  The painting showcase is quite interesting and features the new chaos models painted up as alpha legion in a similar scheme as I intend to do mine.  There are some other miniatures showcases as well for space marines and a couple of warhammer armies.  There is also the return of the citadel hall of fame and a dreary standard bearer.  Whilst the painting and modeling showcases aren't bad overall I'm not impressed with this issue at all.

This months theme in wargames illustrated is the wars of the roses.  For the theme we get the usual overview article of the period, looks at the battles of towton and bosworth, and a look at how to paint up burgundian mercenaries.  It was all interesting enough although its not a period I can see myself gaming at any point soon.  Flames of war of course features with a tactics article for American light tank companies and a bit of history and paint schemes for the Messerschmitt Me262 'Stormbirds'.  There is also an interesting look at Osprey's new arthurian rules Dux Bellorum, something else to tempt me and one of many new rulesets osprey plan on releasing.  Other articles of note include battle reports for the battle of naseby and the tet offensive.  Like last months this issue isn't bad, but isn't spectacular either.  I presume they're saving all their best stuff for next months special big celebration issue.

Too Many Starter Sets.....

I often hear that we're living in the golden age of gaming, and I think this may well be true, I love the recent explosion in products and new companies doing well.  This does leave a problem though as we approach the christmas season (I know its early but I work in retail and alas I've already been dealing with it for the last two weeks)  There are four great looking starter sets competing for my money and time.

 

 The first of these and the one I am definately going to buy is the new 40K starter set from Games Workshop.  I've said this before but 2nd ed 40K was my first real wargame and after a long break I'm really enjoying playing it again.  This set has some superb figures (the chaos in particular), contains the new rulebook and comes in at a very reasonable price.

Battlefront games have finally woken up to the modern world and have started to produce miniatures in plastic (I wonder if the plastic soldier company was really starting to eat into their profits), and very sensibly they're going to throw a lot of them into a big box with the mini rulebook and call it a starter set.  I have fledgling forces for the Brits and the Germans and this would turn them both into small armies.  It looks to be good value for money and good quality miniatures, but I haven't actually persuaded any of my opponents to start collecting flames of war yet (although one guy has stated an intent to collect), so if I got them they might end up never really getting used.

This next one was a surprise, although prehaps it shouldn't have been.  It's the new sci-fi sports game from mantic called dreadball, its currently up on kickstarter and has already been funded.  It basically seems to be bloodbowl mixed with tron set in their warpath universe and written by jake thornton (the man behind the excellent dwarf kings hold series), which in my mind is probably a winning combination.  As yet there are no details on the gameplay and with a game like this that will be the deciding factor way above how pretty the models are (which for things like 40K selection can for me often be all that matters).

And finally sedition wars from studio McVey, a sort of space crusade-esque board game stuffed full of truly excellent minis.  This also had a VERY successful kickstarter that I regret not joining.

The problem here isn't money, (I reckon all 4 sets together will end up costing £250-£300, which isn't so far beyond my hobby budget from now till christmas to be unobtainable), but gaming time.  I have three regular opponents and normally manage to get a game of something against one of them every 2-3 weeks, so even one of these sets will keep me busy for a few months.  In theory I could buy all four and they would keep me busy for the next year, but in reality they'll just sit on a shelf doing nothing as I get distracted by something new and shinny that we haven't even heard of yet. 
It's a shame but I think I need to limit myself to dark vengence and one other, but which will it be?


Oh I forgot, there will a new Hobbit game out in december to tempt me too!

Flames Of War Panzer Kanonen

It's subscription renewal time for wargames illustrated and that means another box of free toys!  This time I choose this excellent set of Panzer Kanonen (tank aces) which contains a specially scuplted stug and panther.  I don't have any specific use for these models, but they do look rather cool on my shelf.

Stormtalon, Alpha Legion Lord & Primaris Pysker

There's been a bit of a dearth of posting around here recently, and that's because it's summer and I've been outside enjoying myself.  Finally I've got around to finishing another couple of bits, starting with this stormtalon gunship.  A rather cool piece and I'm looking forward to trying it out next weekend.

Also this chaos lord for my fledgeling alpha legion force.  I've got rather excited this week over the leaked pics from the new 40K starter set, the chaos side in particular will make very welcome additions to my collection.

And finally this primaris pysker to act as a HQ choice for my allied imperial guard detactment.  This is an older model that came with some chaos marines that I bought off ebay as a useful bonus.

Perseus, Medea and Some More Argonauts

A bit of a break from 40K today as I atempt to clear a few half finished projects off my desk.  First up is my completed unit of argonauts from wargames foundry that you can see above (and the new additions below).  The most inetresting of the bunch is the angel like zetes who is the son of boreas the north wind.  The other nine are pretty standard.

And finally a couple of extra personallities from greek mythology, on the left we have the mighty Perseus holding the head of medusa, and on the left we have the targic figure of medea who helped jason win the golden fleece in colchis.