An impromptu game of kill team

This was an impromptu game of kill team that I played a few weeks back. A mate of mine was picking up his father from a party in town and had a few hours to kill, so he dropped by for a quick game of kill team. The teams were my guard horde list, featuring 16 guardsmen, including 4 with special weapons and a Sgt to lead them, facing off against a slightly less horde GSC team, including 2 aberrants and a number of neophytes.

I was worried by the aberrants and even more so after the free movement (cult ambush?), a number of them got before the first turn. I can't remember if we did the scout phase or not now but I have the feeling that we might have either gone for the same counter or cancelled each other out, meaning that the phase was pretty much useless for both of us.

Mid turn one and the GSC are almost upon us already! 

A close up of the above shot. You can see one of the aberrants on top of the building directly in front of my little castle. My opponent had chosen not to charge this turn as he was a long way out, about 10 inches I think, so closed the gap ready for next turn. 

Coming in on the flank, the leader and his 2 bodyguards. 

Turn 2 and the aberrant in the centre is no more, melted by the super charged plasma goodness of my gunner. With Comms +1, and orders, the weapon reduced the model to molten slag, although I probably wouldn't have super charged the weapon if I'd have know about the special rule that drops the damage by 1. Same result, less chance of cooking myself. 

This was in to turn 3 and I was starting to dominate now. My extra numbers were starting to tell and I was pushing models up. I forgot to say, we were playing the mission where you have to get models off the board and even though I had not manage it yet, I had 3 in good positions to go for it and I had successfully stopped his first wave from trying. The three models under the bridge in the top centre of the board are actually mine, making a break for the back lines. My main threat at this point as I have eliminated both aberrants, are the three models hiding behind the lower crate, you can just see the base of one sticking out.

End of turn 3 and we called it here. In the picture above, the models lying down were shaken and so weren't a threat to me and so I concentrated on the other models, the ones behind the crate and the ones hiding under the bridge on the right, eliminating all of them. we then skipped forward to the moral phase and this resulted in the GSC team breaking and at this point there was no way back for them, with all there models either removed or shaken again. I on the other hand still had the majority of my team alive and kicking, with 13 of the 16 still on the board, although many had flesh wounds on them. 

I don't think that this was quite the overwhelming victory it looks like but eliminating the aberrants early in the game helped a lot, taking out his most valuable models and the ones that could have done some serious damage had they got in to combat. Another really enjoyable game of kill team and another success for the Guard. So far the guard are proving them selves a lot better at this game than the death watch and as you'll see from the next post, this continues, in a fashion anyway.

Hobby update.

So today is just a quick hobby update, just to show what I've been up to and to keep something on the blog!

The grey horde assembles

A closer shot of the grey horde

So, the other half was south with the kids at the in laws, having an early Christmas, as we won't be able to travel down over the actual festive period. I was unable to go due to work but it also gave me an  opportunity to get some DIY done, in the form of stripping and sorting the play room. In the evenings I took the time to relax and cracked out the air brush to get some priming and basing done. I set myself quite an optimistic aim, one which I ultimately failed to achieve. The pictures above show most of the models that were ready to prime and base, although there are about two dozen guardsmen not shown, which were also on the list.

In the end I managed to get most of them done! From memory, I airbrushed;

10 skitarii rangers
10 skitarii vanguard
25 guardsmen
8 ravenwing bikes
3 attack bikes plus crew
46 marines (including  19 deathwatch marines)
19 terminators
1 hellhound
4 rhinos
1 dreadnought
6 chaos marines
14 chaos cultists

These were done in a variety of Grey's and blacks, starting with a light grey for the  chaos forces and gradually adding more black as time went on until the deathwatch were sprayed up in all black. I did the airbrushing over 2 evenings and I'm pretty pleased with the results, especially as I haven't used my airbrush and compressor for quite a while. They worked as there supposed to, although I was suffering with clogging quite a bit, as there seems to be a few bits of dried paint in my black primer. While this was annoying, at least it wasn't the compressor or airbrush that was the problem.

While I managed to get a significant number of models primed, I did fail to get two leman Russ's and a whole bunch, about 40, scions painted. The main reason for this is that they were not being primed in grey\black. The LRBT's were being painted in green, having already been primed on a previous occasion. The scions were to receive a custom primer\base coat, using a combination of black primer and red paint. This meant that I needed to mix up the paint rather than just dump it in to the airbrush and I never quite got around to doing it. This does mean that next time I will just be able to concentrate on these models and get them sorted.

So all in all a successful period of hobby time. Now I just have to find the time to get the rest of the paint on them!

Future projects

Recently you may have noticed that I have been posting a bit more sporadically than usual. I have generally tried to keep to posting twice a week or at the very least once a week but recently I've been struggling to do even that. There are a few reasons for this. I haven't lost any of my enthusiasm for the blog and I actually have a number of posts, either sitting in my draft folder, half finished, or in my head, waiting for me to actually get something written down. I have my guard kill team to post up, along with all the fluff and back story for each member. My deathwatch are also modelled up and ready for painting, plus I've started building my marine and AdMech teams. I've also got a couple of other posts sitting waiting to be finished plus some batreps. Plenty of content to keep me going for weeks.

There are several reasons for not posting. My new job is a factor that i've mentioned before.  Working nights over the weekend has meant that I've lost a lot of my hobby time, not only as I'm sleeping on the weekends but also it means that I don't get as much free time during the week as I'm catching up with my housework, such is the life of a house husband. The main reasons that I haven't had time to write and post stuff is that I've been spending all of my other free time on the DIY.

I'm currently upgrading the utility room (read upgrading as building a whole new one) and redoing the play room, which I'm in the process of stripping back to bare walls and floors. There is a good reason for this, as there will be a new arrival to the family in february and as such were going to need some better washing and drying facilities, apart from the back of the garage and the spare bedroom (which won't be spare for very long).

I'm hoping that I might get some more time to blog in the new year but we'll see. I know that I probably could use my breaks at work to do some blogging, but right now it's 4 o'clock on Saturday morning and I've been up since 8am with a two and a half hours sleep while the young lady was at nursery on Friday afternoon and I'm pretty much just monging while watching rubbish on YouTube. Saturday and Sundays are a little better as I don't get up till about 2 but then I don't get an afternoon nap before work. I guess I'm just getting ready for all the sleepless nights when the next one turns up!

Anyway, I haven't gone anywhere, real life is just taking over somewhat. Hopefully I'll be back up to speed soon.

Infinity scenery packs

A couple of weeks ago I posted about a new terrain set that I had purchased and last week I posted a few pictures and ideas on alternative layouts. The set in question was the Infinity Scenery Packs, Navajo Outpost. This set comes with four building and six containers plus the mat and all for the princely sum of 8 English pounds.

Navajo Outpost

Well, after having it a few weeks and playing a few games, including my first two full games of kill team, on the set, I have come to really like it. It is simple and cheap but provides everything you need for gaming. Yes you can get better looking set but they are also a lot more expensive, like a LOT more expensive. There are a couple of downsides, which I shall get to in a moment but overall I highly recommend the set, which is why I decided to bite the bullet and bought another.

Kurage Station

The Kurage Station is a slightly different set, with a different aesthetic to the outpost but one that I think will work for my kill teams. I did ponder going completely different and very "alien" but in the end I settled for a more human\imperial vibe. There are several reason I bought a second set, for variety and playing options, so that I'm not always using the same board but also cos there's bridges and who doesn't like bridges. Yep, that's pretty much the main reason I bought a second set, cos it's got bridges, two of them in fact. It comes with 4 buildings, 6 small containers (about half the size of the other set) and the two bridges plus the mat as well. Again this lot cost me 8 pounds, so for around 20 pound (ncluding all the postage) I have two boards with scenery, not bad really.

Now I did say there was some negatives, two really, both of which I could solve easily, probably with just one solution. The trouble is that the building and crates are very light and are easily knocked during the game, as happened several times in my kill team games. Secondly, the big building get a bit wobbly and deform when loaded with models, especially big ones like the new plague marines or a couple of deathwatch. There seems to be a simple solution to all this and it's to fit MDF frames inside. Now, I got the idea from eBay, where someone was selling sets of MDF frames, which were basically two lengths of wood in an X shape that fit across the insides of the building from corner to corner, bracing the set and also adding some rigidity of the center, stopping deformation I noticed when the models were on top. Unfortunately I can't seem to find them anymore, which isn't a problem as I wasn't going to buy them but I wanted to show another club member, who has a laser cutter, to see if he could knock a bunch up for me. I probably could do it myself with the MDF sheets I already have but getting them laser cut would be better. I'll just have to rely on my descriptive powers instead, what could possibly go wrong! I can't imagine it will cost much for a few bits of MDF, so even after I get them the scenery sets will still be excellent value for money.

Edit: found the after writing the post and and a bit of an internet trawl.

X braces