Lots happening at GW

So, I'm a little behind the curve here but i thought I'd cover a few of the recent GW releases and announcements. Theres quite a bit to get through so i won't spend much time on each section, just my first thoughts and all and i will go into detail on a couple of the points later.

First up are the new paints from GW, Contrast Paints. Now i haven't had any in hand sonincant talk from personal experience, however there are a couple of guys in the local group who have had a play around and so far, it seems very mixed.

Contrast paints

One of the members has been painting up there khorne Desmond with Khorne(?) Red and the results so far look very good. One member has been painting up there Space Wolves and the results haven't been quite so good, looking very washed out compared to the classic method. Most of my models are primed black or have a set colour scheme to adhere to, so i won't be diving in just yet. My chaos kill team might just be a good candidate for trying Contrast paint but that will be a while before i get to them.

Pop miniatures are another recent release and something i am definitely looking to grab hold of, namely the space wolf and blood angel. While unusually don't go for any of this sort of thing, i really do like these guys and am hopeful that they will do other ones in the future, maybe the commissar "previewed" in the Regimental Standard post, or an AdMech version. Either way I'm definitely grabbing some.

Hot on the heals for the Pop miniatures came this big fella;

While many of us probably never thought we would ever see a space marine action figure, here it is! This is also in the list of things to buy, this time for the kids. I haven't seen much about this but I'm hoping that it will come in different chapters.

And finally there are these guys. I'm less sure on these, although the little man quite likes these. I would be interested in seeing these in person and coloured. The sister and the blood angle are the two that look best to me.

On a more serious note, the latest Kill Team expansion is with us, Elites, and it's a bit of a mixed bag as far as I'm concerned. While it's good that there are now more options, some of these option are disappointing.

Moving up a scale, the new Admech transport I here and its about time. As one of the only armies to not have a transport, (the only other one that I know of is Imperial Knights and they don't really need one!) its good that they got one, even if its divided opinions. While I don't think that it is in keeping with any of there other vehicles I still like it, although I wont be buying one for my army. Its not that I don't need it or want it, as I could do with one for my little admech army to move around but there has been something I want even more previewed recently...….

Which leads nicely on to the biggest one of them all, Apocalypse! Yes, the new version of the game is here and its going to be bigger, better and faster which is good because it couldn't have been much slower before! while I may not be looking to buy the actual book or any of the bits and pieces, like movement trays, I will be looking to splash some cash of one of the box sets, namely this one;

Yes, its Imperial knights and no i'm not jumping on that band wagon. I've two Warglaives at the moment and a small force of 2 tech priest dominus and 20 skitarii. Adding this box for the big Castellan and two Helverins and I've got a good little force of about 2000 points and a nice little story too, something along the lines of Lord takes young Squires out to evaluate them. Anyway, at 100 quid its a bargain!

And last but by no means least is this wonderful young lady!

I cant wait for the rest of them! (and hopefully kill team rules)

Kill Team!

So acouple of weeks ago, I went around to a friend's house for a game, or two, of kill team and was greeted with a very nice set of terrain and 6 primaris reivers, painted in space wolf grey.

After the usual chit chat that goes with these things, you know the complimenting and discussion of models,  (were well deserving of complimenting, along with the board) we got down to mission selection for our first game.

My opponent had 6 reivers, 3 with bolt carbines and 3 with knives, I think one or maybe two had grapnels and gravchutes. I think this was mostly to make up the points, as the gravchutes were pretty pointless.

The first game we rolled up for terror tactics and my opponent gained the initiative for setting up. Now, which ever way you want to spin this, my opponent had lost straight out the bag. I was facing 6 reivers with 17 guardsmen and he would need all the luck in the world to win. In theory he had the chance to win, by killing killing more than 12 of my guys or killing 8 and getting all his guys off the board.

Needless to say, the game went as expected. Turns 1 and 2 I stayed back and defended, resulting in the deaths of a couple of my guys but I also managed to take out a reiver, although it did take 2 rounds of shooting with an overcharged plasma gun!

I didn't get many pictures of the game, were were a bit busy checking rules and generally having fun. The end result of the game was a conclusive victory for the guard, even though we called it early. We called it at the end of my movement phase in turn 4, as by this point I was already 9-3 up and set-up for a full advance off the board next turn. I had lost 3 men and had a number of flesh wounds spread around probably getting on for half my remaining men were wounded and I had managed to take out one marine and had a flesh wound on another. I had however run 4 men off the board by this point and had another 4 within running distance for next turn meaning that I had the possibility of getting 8 men off for a total of 16 points a total my opponent could not challenge.

Turn 2 I think, as all the reviews are still alive at this point and doing a good job so far of holding the mid-ground.

My opponent did a good job of holding the mid-ground, however, he just couldn't deal with the numbers as I could easily just hold his guys in combat while running past with others. He also couldn't just sit back and shoot, as I could just swamp forward and he didn't have enough shooting to deal with the number of bodies comming at him. He also didn't have the option of just charging past, as i could then have just walked off the board with all my guys. So all in all it was my he to loos from the beginning.

After we finished we decided to play again. My opponent kept the same force but it decided to change things up slightly, just switching up a few bodies and weapons, i can't remember exactly what as it was a while ago, however there was definitely an extra flamer in there.

For game two we went with mission 1, XXX and again this leant itself to my team. Needing to hold objectives was something i could easily do and i could easily out number my opponent when necessary.

Deployment; there are two groups, one by the drum bottom right and one by the stack middle left.

A close up of my "castle", with leader Sgt, Comms and plasma, supported by a couple of guardsmen. 

The lone guardsman, for some reason it put down a single guardsman up on to of the gantry. I don't quite know why it did this, possibly because there was an objective up there, anyway it actually proved quite useful and was a good distraction. 

The reivers move in for the kill and promptly fail miserably

Two reivers Vs 3 guardsmen, 

This really shows the scale difference, granted the reivers bases are built up slightly but still, they dwarf the guardsman.

Again, this was a convincing victory for the guard, with the guard claiming 2 of the 4 objectives, with one contested and one unclaimed. I had lost several guardsmen, 3 if i remember right, compared to only 1 reiver killed, plus i had several models with flesh wounds. Again my opponent did well and played very cleverly, charging from cover to stop my plasma overwatching, hiding out of sight until the last minute. However, the dice god's god very much decided that it was not to be for my opponent. A prime example of this was turn 4, which could easily have swung the game to a draw at the very least. There were 3 combats happening, all over objectives. The picture above shows the fight over objective 2 and one of those reivers is a combat specialist. There was another fight up top for the contested objective and a fight in the back field for another objective where a reiver was outnumbered 2 to 1. My opponent started at the back, and managed to miss with all his attacks, so we moved to the centre and his leader, who only managed to get one wound through, which was promptly saved. No great so far but he still had two reivers, including the combat specialist, to take out 2 guardsmen, he even played a tactic to get an extra attack with the combat specialist, and managed to do one flesh wound from 7 (or 8?) attacks. All in all, his assaults fell flat when he really needed them.

So, two great games of kill team. However, it did go to reinforce the fact that the missions are skewed to horde armies over smaller more elite armies.

Real life.........

So, I haven't posted for a while (again!) But I have a good excuse this time!

The new utility room

Over the last couple of weeks I have been rebuilding the utility room, including rebuilding walls, re-wiring and plumbing, ripping out the kitchen cupboards and relocating them to the utility room. I've been on a bit of a time schedule as the vinyl floor is being layed tomorrow and so pretty much everything needs to be sorted by then. As things stand, by the time you read this, I should have the majority sorted, hopefully it will just be the window to repaint (dam wooden windows).

Once the utility is finished, I then need to start on the pantry and redo that. Well I say redo bit in actual fact, I need to create one from the random bit of space between the kitchen and the conservatory at the back of the garage. No I've no idea why the previous owners decided to build the conservatory out the back of the garage and then fix the fact that it's out the back of the garage by building a random room to join the kitchen and conservatory but they did and now I have the job of turning this in to a more useful space, hence pantry. All this need to be done quickly, as the actual kitchen needs ripping out and preparing for the new kitchen that should arrive in about 2 weeks time. Oh, and it's not just a case of taking out the old kitchen and putting in the new one, because that would be far to simple. No, I need to completely rewire, although we may get an electrician in for that, as the new cooker will be electric induction and not bottled gas. Then there is the plumbing to sort as we're moving the sink and dishwasher, possibly taking down part of the wall, if it's not supporting the ceiling that is! The list goes on and on and as usual you the first thing to get chopped is hobby time.

That being said I did actually get a 1500 point game of 40k in last week (batrep incoming at some point) and managed to pop down the club last weekend to say hi to everyone. I've also got quite a few posts in the draft folder that are half written and I should have a bit of time in a couple of weeks, when the wife is south visiting family, to write a few posts, provided the kitchen fitting is going well that is!

Anyway, that's why there haven't been many posts and why there may not be many post for a little while. I though that with the wife being on maternity leave this year I would have loads of time to blog and hobby, instead I've less and less time!