Grasping at straw?

This is some of Rich who dropped round Monday night with shaun for a bit of SAGA action.

I've played a few times now but this was my first time out in 28mm Dark Age mode, you know as the game is designed and marketed, and we went for a simple "Kill the Warlord" scenario.

Given choice I took the Vikings and Rich had the Anglo-Saxons. Shaun had joined us and was quick to inform me that despite the pointy hat brigade being technical favourites they hadn't yet claimed a victory amongst a good number of games. Playing at 6 points I couldn't resist a unit of beserkers or "paper tigers" as Shaun called them.

Given the victory conditions we somehow conspired to deploy our respective Warlords as far away as possible from each other. As such they generally ignored each other for a bit and urged their respective forces into a bit of general carnage.

As an experiment Rich had combined three units of Hearthgaurd types into one uber-unit which he rolled towards me with all haste. I shot him up a bit and then he made that first charge of the game into my eight Hirdmen. Running through the process, battle dice were expended and attack dice mounted up on both sides. Double-handed rolling was required and breath was held........

.....for one hit a piece! Neither of us saved so after an awful lot of gnashing and wailing it was one down on each side and as the attacker Rich bounced. Just another Friday night after the tavern then?
I flung in the paper tigers who instantly exploded on a 1 to 1 basis with their opponents. Not sure if they were armed with war axes or rigged up with C4 and a presing need to visit Valhalla. Point is they got there pretty quick each with a new mate.

Wiping themselves down Rich's boys then got another dose of Hirdmen who with numbers on their side claimed all but one of the yocals for a couple more new residents at Odin's feet. As such Brave Sir Robyn and his faithful retinue bravely ran away and hid in the nearest house, probably for a quick cup of tea and a nice hearth-cake!


I meanwhile concentrated on butchering the remaining Anglos which shouldn't have been too difficult with their elite dead and Warlord hiding, ........SHOULDN'T have been.

Multiple big bunches of 1s and 2s later this was the final stand-off (featuring every figure left on the table) as my dice did all in their power to snatch a defeat from the jaws of near certain victory. With the sun setting the Warlords clashed on the final turn of the game only to bounce off trading insults in language that neither understood.

My one extra mutilated unit claimed the Vikings a technical victory but with hardly even a Bondi remianing to haul a goat, let alone take over the place, I think that is the more honest result.........a winning-ish draw :)

OHHHH-DINNNN!!!

It's a habit......

.....winning that is or so they say.

Wasps finally picked up an ugly win on Saturday and I was there to bellow them on. ANY win after nine straight league losses is mana from sporting heaven :)

I jubilantly returned home to my recently ordered Warhammer Invasion expansion March of the Damned turned up and so I spent some of last night sleeving cards and seeing what I'd got.

I've suffered something of a reverse of fortune recently and have been receiving something of a pummelling to all comers. My Dwarf deck in particular is still waiting for its first win despite coming agonisingly close on a number of occasions.

Much as with any strategy based game now that I've got the mechanics into my head its time to work on the army lists, so to speak, a little more. The Dwarf deck is a bit slow starting without enough decent combos and too many "Battlefield Only" bruisers. MotD has given me a few extra Slayers that fit the bill so they'll find their way in and I'll theme the deck to suit.

I'm still definitely looking to theme decks rather than going all killer but I definitely want to get a bit more competitive. With my main all conquering Chaos deck I'd actually like to get a bit more of a corruption theme in there, maybe got a bit more beast orientated and IF I'm feeling really brave take the insanely nasty Blood Dragon Knights out :/ Even the Orcs could do with some tweek.

Admittedly I'd be taking them out to put them in an Undead deck, possibly with some Dark Elf stuff as I haven't touched them at all yet. I've also been very impressed by the Lizardmen and their savage ability, which Stewart has harnessed to disgusting effect alongside the poncy High Elves. Not wishing to copy, or touch a high elf with something other than an axe, I'll have to find another option.

So as always boring prep is the key, just need to sit down and do it :)

Hit the LIGHTS!!!

I've found a format and I seem to be sticking to it :)

This is Lewis. Lewis has been doing an excellent job running Enfield Gamers' current Necromunda campaign and last night he came up with an absolute corker for us all to battle through!

Basically we were playing the Scavengers scenario with the low-light Treacherous Condition on Space Hulk boards or what we quickly dubbed Space-Munda which turns out to be a particularly awesome game.

Armed to the max

We basically used the board squares for movement and range and the corridors for line of sight, no shooting round corners, as per Space Hulk itself. We did play that you could shoot over another model's shoulder as long as you were directly behind them which added a certain element and allowed a bit more firepower to be applied.

To add an extra element to the scenario we made the lighting level a bit more random fluctuating on a D6 each turn. 1: 4 inch LoS, 2-5: 8 inch LoS 6: unlimited LoS. This helped make the games incredibly cagey as everyone strove to gain the drop on the other with the risk/reward equation being particularly savage.

In Space no-one can hear you Munda??

My first game of the evening was against Lewis's Goliaths and we quickly realised that the four flamers that we were deploying between us were likely to have a major effect on proceedings especially when set onto overwatch. For both of us this was something that we'd never done with flamers, why would you in a standard game?

The first few turns were all about manoeuvre / redeployment as most games generally at which point I suddenly found myself with the unexpected upper hand loot-wise. Then IT happened!

Beasty Strike 1

Beasty Strike 2

IT was my apparent need to employ the scenario's optional Beasty attack rule. Lewis wasn't keen to go tit for tat but I managed to goad him into it. The result?..........I lose a ganger and juve who between them were carrying 3 loot tokens...as in a scream in the darkness and NEVER seen again....awesome :) My fault one suspects.

The loss of both loot and numbers soon told and forced into a corner with half my starting number still in the fight it was time to make that Tactical Withdrawl that we all know about. Nothing on offer but more pain

Juve-tastic: A killer in the making

One upside was one of my Juves, TK9237, scoring a total of 5 wounding hits, 4 of which were in combat. Suddenly he's top ganger and fairly tasty in a ruck, an uncommon trait for a Van Saar.......he probably deserves a name.

More D&D tomorrow night and I need some sleep :)

Half Measures?

Hola,

Quiet weekend watching the rugby so I also managed to crack on with the next block of 30 Boyz. All my brown dry-brushes and block skintone was completed before I split them into two lots of 15 for the detail work. This way I can go back and forth whilst washes etc are drying and the idea of churning through 30 lots of anything was just too much to contemplate :(

Working through I noticed two particular boys where I'd gone a bit OTT with the stack flock fur and effectively given the one-sies or gorilla costumes, you decide, and though they might amuse. Green wash and basing tonight!

Elsewhere, with the usual "it's almost payday, lets buy some more toys" itch in full effect I've been somewhat torn between another cycle of Warhammer Invasion,  Stewart has been caning me horribly with his Lizardmen and Undead decks both of which interest me, and going full bore with Dystopian French. I was tempted to go for both but last month saw the card getting some non-toy related batter (frassing rassing Dick Dasterdly!) and I REALLY shouldn't.

So, prior to Orc related funds I'm going to be sensible and just pick up the Lost and the Damned WI expansion along with the DW French fleet box plus the Toulon cruisers, BIG thermal lance thingys and the rulebook..........maybe some of the subs, only and extra £8 :)

The Dungeons and Dragon Ride

Continuing a theme, this is Jon. Jon has been running the D&D campaign for those of us who do and is another founder member of Enfield Gamers and all of it's previous incarnations.

Well known around the club for his horrendous dice and excellently painted figures Undead Jon is also rather keen on all things hailing from the afterlife. Jon is also well known for his immaculately prepared rosters / ganglists / character sheets and the amount of work that he's put into the D&D.

Thursday night saw the latest instalment of D&D and Jon had prepared another stormer as we headed back into combat. Visiting a mage college on the isle of Isleholme we found it in "lockdown" for reasons initially unknown.

Effecting entry / breaking in the place was eerily silent until we finally made contact with an immensely jittery mage. Calming him down it became that their menagerie had broken loose and stood between us and the Arch-Mage's quarters. Well why wouldn't it?
Said menagerie consisted of an Owlbear and a Roper. The Roper caused some issues, dropping Rob's Dwarven Cleric to strength zero, thus collapsing to the floor a la newborn, and gave most of us a stern fight. The Owlbear lined up against Charlie's Ranger and Ian's Warlock.

Owlbear = Ranger fodder

Over the next few minutes we all noticed just how effective the Elven Ranger had become with his flaming bow. Standing still he kicks out two double-arrowed bow shots. One round of decent dice kicked out 75 damage and definitely clipped the Owl's, well.....everything!

The Roper almost gave us a good whipping.....before Ranger-time!

As mentioned the Roper tied several of us up, fairly literally, (ho ho ho) for a few rounds and was proving quite the handful. This was until Ranger boy came around the corner and unleashed his Hail of Doom Arrows. The guy suddenly seems to have become the deadly love-child of Legolas and Hank (for those in the know)!!

The Assassin de-cloaked

Moving on we had to do investigative stuff, i.e stuff that we couldn't shoot to death, like read and think. This proved more challenging until trouble came and found us in the slinky shape of an Assassin-ette.

Appearing from nowhere she headshot one mage type before disappearing before our various eyes. Locating our Arch-Mage we combined confusion with him attempting to locate her via Detect Evil and a little bit of scrying. Proving unable to do so she once again de-cloaked and shot our Arch-Mage dead in the head with a natural 20. Dog food in a cloak!

As we left it......mild chaos!

To top things off our first met guide proved turncoat summoning a ghost and ghasts before legging it along with Assasin-ella. Time also stormed out on us whilst we contemplated various risky pursuits.

A cliff-hanger then, just like any good series :)

I was Rob-bed!

Say hello to Rob!

Tuesday down at the Enfield Gamers we finished off Necromunda raid campaign turn and Rob's Delaque were going after my Spore Cave.

Rob's a really good bloke and has been a mate of mine for years. Gaming wise he has a penchant for Dwarves, despite being over 6 feet in height, though he does eat and drink like one! Rob also has a habit of accidentally cheating.....mainly himself and always offers an extremely enjoyable game of whatever you might be playing.

Back at the game with only three sentries against almost Rob's entire gang I didn't hold out too much hope and was quite thankful when Rob, and his dice, tripped the alarm though he had power-axed the objective, Honest Bob's, to bits by then.

With the rest of my lads coming in from the flanks Rob's lads were caught in the crossfire as they made their "Strategic Retreat" and took the first possible opportunity to bottle it.

So technically I squeaked a win, suffered zero injuries and my Spore Cave was merely damaged rather than destroyed. Something of a lucky result.....cheers Rob!

It's a skate-by. The Juves stake-out Honest Bob's

Lying down on the job

Second round of the night were 3-ways based on the scavengers scenario with 4D6x10 creds on offer in the centre of the table. Drawn against Stewart's cowardly Escher and Jon's much depleted Cawdor I felt that I had a decent sniff of a result.

Jon's Tunnels allowed most of his depleted band of god-squad to deploy all over the objective which he quickly stormed whilst Stewart and I tripped over each other to get at him. Jon rained grenades down on the Escher-ettes whilst I hid and sniped manfully whilst shifting around the open right flank.

With his hand forced Stewart made the first assault on Jon's position only to be cut down by a two-way crossfire and running away like, well a big bunch of girls. So as Jon turned for home I chased after him and nailed two of his lads with a wall of Juve-tastic short range Uzi fire.

With the swag-bag duly dropped it was a 50-50 check as to whether I found it.....NO! Jon did manage to capture himself a couple of young girls (ahem!!) who were quickly ransomed to go with his glut of XP.

Rob-bed!!

RIP the WIP

After a bit of thought I've decided to kill the WIP page and consolidate irregular WIP posts into the main page as at the mo it's all feeling a bit to thinly spread.

As such I've moved the most recent WIP post over:

Dystopian Wars. I've played loads of Uncharted Seas enjoyably plus a couple of run throughs of DW and despite the richness of the Steampunk background I never found any of the model ranges to click with me fully, always an important thing for me, until now........

I've been reguarly flicking past Spartan's site since the first flying battleship was posted up and now the whole French fleet is up on pre-order and my mojo is well and truly engaged. Very Tintin-esque (yes I know he's actually form Belgium) they just hit the spot that other factions fail to shell / torpedo / thermic lance. The great big thermic lances on the cruisers look awesome and subs with mortars have got to be a winner.

I really love the control towers on the bigger ships and plan on emualting the sea blue / ice grey camo shown on Spartan's site. I also plan to name every craft after a French rugby player, wingers for escorts, fly half for the carrier, back row for the cruisers with locks and props for the big boys. Flagship quite obviously has to be La Chabal :)

Might as well pick up everything I need in one lump which with rules will be a cool ton but with a club campaign in the offing I don't mind making an investment that I know i'll get a return on. Best paint those Orcs for sale then :)