Friday 27 January 2017

NI4 Friendly game 2

My last game of the weekend, and another fun game against a young opponent. After my last defeat I was hoping for a better showing from the Knights, it didn't happen, it went from bad to worse! Still i had fun.

This game used my standard 1500 point list, so basically the same as the last game but only 2x tac squads and one 5x man and one 10x man assault squad, command squad and captain, 5x man DC squad with Lemartes and a 5x man vanguards squad with sanguine priest.

Ill appoligise now, this was my 6th game of the weekend and I was fed up with taking notes or even proper pictures, so things are a little confused and I think I've got the pictures right! I normally take pictures of dice with the relevant turn numbers on but this game i don't seem to have taken any but for turn 1 and turn 5!

Usually I take a picture like this, my dice on my side and my opponents on the other. So thus is my turn 5 and my opposition has only had 4 turns, so it the top of turn 5. 


Deployment and turn 1

My deployment was simple, one 5 man tac squad in the ruin on the right again and one 5 man tac squad in tthel ruin, with the command squad and captain behind. A similar setup to lasttime. 



Turn 1 was not very long or very interesting, as I had little on the board my opposition moved up as much as possible and shot only the long range stuff, in return I had a few pot shots but neither of us did any real damage.

Turn 2



Turn 2 and the reserves arrived. My opponent dropped a unit of raptors (the assault marine) on my left near my command squad. The result of which was fairly obvious as the squad was decimated, although the command squad took some hits too. Mostly from the marines that piled out of the rhinos behind.

The whirlwind is actually a rhino.

The majority of the attack came on my left flank with 3 rhinos driving at the command squad and tactical squad on that side. Fire was returned and damage done, but there were a lot of bodies on the table.

End of turn 2


Turn 3

My left flank was already in tatters atthis point. Most of the tac squad was dead and the command squad was down to half strength. The enemy also had the advantage of numbers. As it goes in these games, my opposition decided to tank shock my warlord and the last member 0f the command squad, nothing happened as they jumped out the way, only to charge in and try and gain vengeance, which they failed miserably at.

Command squad and warlord pre tank shock.

Can't remember what was going on here, but these guys had just lost a member (him having a nap) after destroying the squad that was hiding in the ruins behind. I think it was as a result of an assault.

This shows that scale of the task. A couple of marine in the ruins against a horde of chaos marines, defiantly 2 squander but maybe 3!

The newly arrived vanguard vets taking on some of the chaos.

Turn 4

At this point inthe game it was pretty evident that I was loosing. Still i decided to just have some fun. The assaultmarines who had turned up last turn charged the dread and got mushed well and truly. the vanguard vets and the death company were not doing much better either, both having taken a pummeling.

The assault marines last stand. At least they immobilized it before getting squished. 

The defiler taking a chunk out of the vets.

The aftermath of the assault marines heroic last charge. 

How many Knights can you count? I count 6! 2 death company, 2 vanguard vets, 2 command squad!

Turn 5

The mopping up! At this stage in the game it was all. I was well and truly defeated. My warlord was charged and despite taking down a few chaos marines, it was all to much and he was slain. However, I gotmy own back a bit by taking out the defiler! It was pure luck, the dice gods decided to give me a little consolation prize and saw fit to grant me 3 6's on the pen rolls, which combined with the power mauls and furious charge was just enough to dispatch the monster.

Not sure why this is upside down! The captains last stand.

The DC prepare to charge, the Vanguards in front went first to soak up the overwatch.

Not quite end game but almost, just the Warlords combat to resolve.

So, after 5 turns it was a pretty decisive loss! I only had 4 models on the board! 2 Vets and 2 DC, and goodness knows how many enemy models. I really enjoyed the game, it was a bit of a roller coaster, mostly a downwards one! I think that I could have played a lot better in the last two games, but I was just out to have fun and give a couple of kids a game. Had I taken my Hjaltland LI I don't think I would have won, at least not convincingly, as they were just plain old "run around and kill things" games, not objective based.

Even despite these losses, the whole weekend was a really good weekend, filled with a lot of fun games against some very friendly opponents at a great venue. Roll on next year!

Tuesday 24 January 2017

Minor milestone

Ok, so this post is a little bit silly, but I'm kinda excited by it. For the first time, to my knowledge anyway, the blog has generated over 1000 views in a month! That might be small change to some people out there, but form its quite an achievement.


Ok, so it was only 1 over, but still, there it is in black and white. As you can see, total views is over 6000 now, I missed the 5000 mark before Christmas so the next big milestone to look forward to will be the 10 thousand mark, but that may be a few months away.

Friday 20 January 2017

NI4 friendly game 1

So, this is one of the two friendly games I played at the end of Northern Invasion 4 all the way back at the end of last year! Its taken a while to get them up here but I wanted to get them posted anyway. I also have two other games sitting in the draft folder written up and ready to go from several months ago, from back at the tail end of last summer I believe! Ill post them sometime soon as well, but they could sit in the draft box for sometime yet waiting for a space. Anyway, here's the first of the two batreps;

This game was played after I had finished the tournament on the Sunday. There were a couple of young kids hanging around watching what was happening, and one of them asked if I would play him, after having played 4 games in a day and a half I was a bit gamed out with my guard but I had my Eagle Knights in my bag, so I decided to change it up and play with them. 

We played around 1800 points, I say around as I think my opponent in this games had around 1834 points or something similarly odd and I managed to cobble together just over 1810 using my 1500 point list plus a few bits I had lying around. I could have allied in 300 points easy from my guard, but I felt like just winging it with what I had. 

In the end my list was something like;

Captain with stormshield and relic blade (which I forgot about!) with a command squad with champion, novitiate, and 3 vets with sstormshield and powerswords. 3 5x man tactical squads started on The table with the command squad. In reserve I had 2 10x man assault squads, 5x man vanguard vet squad and a 5x man death company squad. 

So a descent of angles style setup, and not optimized in anyway, shape or form. But a fun list and completely different from my guard army!

My opposition had a marine list, with; captain, librarian, 2 10x man tactical squads, 5x man sniper scout squad, 10x man terminator squad, 3x man bike squad, dreadnought, and a land raider. I think he may have had a 5x man devastator squad as well. All in all, a pretty normal marine list, nothing to strong or broken and pretty much what you'd expect from a young player.

As I said, this game was for fun, so we dint bother with warlord traits or missions and went for just killing each other. Probably a mistake on my part, as it was pretty clear that I was out manned and out gunned! But oh well!

After 4 tournament games I didn't feel like keeping detailed records of the friendly games (not that my records are very detailed) so things are a bit sketchy, however ill fill in what I can from the notes and memory.

Turn 1

With not a lot on the table my opposition mostly moved forward, generally shooting anything that was in range. With just a couple of tic squads and a command squad on the board, turn 1 was a dull affair.


My lines, tac marines in the building bottom left and tac squad in the ruin just in front of the command squad.

The enemy deployment,heavy armour on the right with the raider and dread, with the bikes for some speed. The left is held by various tac squads. His snipers had infiltrated just being the hexagonal terrain in the center.

Moving forward,the bikes blast forward, leaving the raider behind, both closing on the marines in the lower left building. There is also a razorback hidden in the central terrain. 

Turn 2

And my reserves arrive, all 4 squads arrive but the DC misshap and end up being placed right in to  corner of my deployment zone. Not a great start, but at least they survived!


The two assault squads arrive, more or less where they were supposed to.

The vanguards arrive as planned as well.

The "squad"! 

Im not sure what was really going on here, but there was defiantly some rule bending. I decided not to say anything at the time, as the kid was having fun playing a game and it was a casual game. The squad consisted of 10 men with a missile launcher, 2 plasma, melta, flamer, 4 bolters and sgts with plasma pistol and power fist. Looking at the picture the marine on the far left may even be holding a grav gun? Not strictly codex adherent but defiantly tooled up for any eventuality!

This is all that survived from the vanguards unit, not a great start for the squad. I was hoping that most would survive and charge the squads, doing damage with all the ap3 weaponry they have.

Turn 3


The lone survivor, the sanguine priest. Not quite as I planned, and it didn't get any better!

At the top you can just see everything turning to face the two assault squads, with predictable results. At the  the razorback disembarks its cargo of marines.

Turn 4

The tactical marines view

This was the last stand of the tactical marines, half a squad against 3 termies, a dread and a tooled up captain. It want going to end well, although as it happened it didn't end this turn! The marines got lucky with a failed charge from the termies, which blocked the dread from charging. Lucky but only delaying the inevitable

The Knights elite prepare for battle

On the otherside of the table my command squad and DC were reading for battle, there were plenty of units around to charge. The razorback has been destroyed, I think as a result the DC squad, but I don't really remember!

Turn 5

By this point in the game it was pretty obvious that I want going to win! I had few models left, mostly my DC and command squad who could have done some damage to the squads nearby at the back right of the table, but numbers we defiantly against us!

End game

With only a couple of tac marines, and a reduced command squad and DC squad against the at least half his army, not great. One the plus side the last of the assault marines had pulled off a minor mirical and destroyed the raider with a melts bomb! 

The end result - loss - didn't count points but looked like a loss to me, whether you counted points or units, I can't see how itcould really have been anything but a loss. 

The game was fun and I really wasn't playing to win, juathave a good  which I achieved. There were a few issues, many classic to young players. That "squad" for one, very much a case of "I've a bunch of models, ill form a  with them" plan, not codex compliant in any way, but its a friendly game. Some of the movement distances were a little questionable. Measuring the front model and moving it only for it to end up near the back of the squad at the end of the movement and lastly there is the  shooting measurements, where the tape measure moves depending on which end your looking at. These aren't major issues and in many respects are down to youth and lack of experience. Its only through games like these that they will learn, that's if they listen to what their told that is!

Friday 13 January 2017

2017 the plan

So having looked back over 2016, its time to look forward to 2017. The question is what do i want to achieve this year? Well, lets have a look shall we?

1) the main painting objective this year will be the Eagle Knights. I would like to get all the models based orange at the very least.

2) table terrain and gaming surface. Having just got a mat and mdf terrain for Christmas, I need  to get on with building and painting the terrain!

3) base my finished models in relation to my new mat. So some sort of green flock is needed.

4) defend my title at Northern Invasion 5.

5) sell off models. Mainly my extra guard models and most of the Emperors Diciples.

6) finalize a list for the Dark Guardians

7) model up the dark guardians

8) crack out the airbrush and prime some models! Goes with (1)

9) sort out my storage, I have cases but no storage trays. Empty cases are pretty useless.

10) when/if I sell off models (5), I will use the money to purchase new transport for the Dagr Ormr and extra models for the dark guardians, if needed.

11) add to the fluff. This applies to all my forces. I've got plenty of ideas, just need to get pen to paper.

All in all, I think that I should be able to complete a lot of these by next year. Painting is always a challenge, but I want to try and get my Knights done to a standard that I can take them to NI5. This might not be the best army for defending my title, but I don't want to take the same army two years in a row and it would be a fun force to play with.

I'm really looking forward to getting my mat and terrain sorted, this will make my games that much better and the pictures look that much nicer on the blog. It also means that I can build towards the fluff and have a little campaign going on. On that front, my blog has been mentioned a few times on other sites over the last year and one of the things that's been picked up on is the fluff that I've got going on. It will be one of the main aims this year to really try and push that part of the blog and get some more in-depth stories for the characters and add to the various armies fluff.

I'm looking forward to a new year of hobbying!

Friday 6 January 2017

2016 review



So its that time of year again, and I thought I would start off looking at last years resolutions and see if I actually achieved anything?

For my 2016 plan I kept things pretty simple in an attempt to ensure that I actually achieved some of my goals! Is what did I manage to achieve?

1) Try and model up all the missing models from the various army lists - I've been fairly successful with this one, as I've finished the Hjaltland LI, modeled up the Hrossey MV, the Dagr Ormr and the Emperors Diciples, and have just started painting up the Eagle Knights. The Dark Guardians are still in limbo with only a few models done.

2) Sell models I don't need! I really need to do this! - Er, no, didn't manage this at all, I even gained more models this year with the Betrayal of Calth. Lucky the Burning of Pospero has mk3 Iron armour in which i don't like, otherwise I'd have even more models!

3) Try and base coat some of the models, so at least I can place them on the table together with out getting confused with what model belongs to what army. - This one would be a no, as I said above Hjaltland LI are done but nothing else has seen paint apart from a few Dagr Ormr models that were already primed.

4) Play some games! - got this one done! Played a few games this year, even won a tournament.






So overall I'm at about 50/50, which isn't great! I think I may have gone to general with the plan, so I'm going to try again this year and see what I can achieve.




I thought that I would also look back further to 2015 and see whether i have achieved anything from that year yet!

1) Finish painting my Hjaltland LI, I'm slowly but surely getting there but I need to go faster. - Done! Only took a year longer than I had hoped!

2) Base coat all vehicles, should be easy with an air brush! I've got a few done, but need to get the rest sorted. I'll try and get some of the details done as well. - Nope, still not completed this one!

3) Start on Eagle Knights, I'll probably start with one of the formation, as they'll be easier to complete and I want to use them anyway- This one is done! And there getting ready for painting.

4) Not buy any more models I don't really need! Not sure this one will last but I'll try and it'll link in with the next resolution. - not really relevant but fail anyway with the purchase of Betrayal at Calth

5) Sell off models I don't need, there only taking up space and will provide money towards supplies and paint. - Still failing to achieve this one.

6) Get some pictures up here, its all very nice talking about my models and army fluff, but it'd be nice to get some pics up here. - I think I have been doing pretty well with this one again this year.

So 2 years down the line and I'm still failing at half of these! This means that I'm at 50/50 with my aims for that last two year, I think I'm going to have to sept up my game for this year!