Happy New Year!

Well, another year is upon us.

My recent slackness in posting was due to both a lack of interest in painting, plus my continuing pokemon addiction as well as a trip away to experience a white Christmas.

The trip was good. Saw lots of snow, even on Christmas Day which was really cool.

So looking back at the last year, although I didn't get all that much done really, I am still happy with my progress. Tyranids started, a unit of goblins finished, Dwarf Kings Hold series started to be painted. A few other random bits and pieces as well.

So, what are my gaming resolutions for this year?

1. Kickstarter - Don't back so much. I backed 34 items on kickstarter last year, and have only had full delivery of 2 items. 7 have had partial deliveries. So I have items from 9. Leaving 25 of them in the stage of non-delivery. Now, that is not fully fair, as 1 is still not finished yet, and a few have delivery dates for this year. But still, it is a fair amount of my gaming cash that I could have used to purchase items in hand.
2013 resolution: Think more before backing something on Kickstarter. Is it likely to get a proper release? If so, wait until it does.

2. Paint more. As part of this I am going to set myself realistic goals. Keeping in line with this, my 2013 resolution of projects will be as a start to:

• Finish the 500 points of Tyranids - 8 models to go;
• Finish painting the first set of Dwarf King Hold - 10 skeletons and a dwarven mastiff to go

So not a huge list to start with, but one that I hope will be met and then the next project can be added. What will that be? I am not sure yet but hopefully it will strike me as I get closer to finishing the above.

3. Purchase less. I am going to attempt to paint a model for each one that I purchase. So before anything new is purchased I must paint an equivalent number of models that I currently already own. This will not cut into my backlog, but will hopefully mean it at least does not grow.

4. Game more. I have a regular Saturday "gaming" day. Towards the end of last year, this was more of me going to a friends place and crunkling on his couch. That could have just been end of year fatigue setting in, but I am going to play at least one game a week, be it a board game, miniature game or the like. This will be in addition to any computer games that I play.

So those are some broad and nebulous goals. Will I meet them? Hopefully. What ever happens, fun will be had, paint will be splattered and possibly some excuses will fly. :)

On the bright side, I have already started to implement plan "Finish the Tyranids" and have put some paint on the next 4 Genestealers. Pics to be come in the next update.

Have a safe and successful new year!

Cheers.

Much distraction...

Reading, Pokemon, Borderlands 2... So many things to do that are not painting miniatures.

But, I have now played my first game of 6th edition 40k.

I used my Thousand sons. My army consisted of a Sorcerer, 2 Thousand Sons squads in Rhino's, Havoc squad with 2 Autocannon and 2 heavy bolters, 4 bikes with 2 meltaguns and a Land Raider.

I played against the friends of all races - a Necron force that contained 1 Lord, 1 Destroyer lord, 5 Destroyers, 10 Immortals, 2 squads of 10 Warriors and 6 wraiths.

We played the Emperors Will scenario, deployed in Hammer and Anvil.

In traditional style the Thousand Sons lost. We stopped the game after turn 4, with the victory points sitting at 1 for the Thousand Sons (First Blood) to 4 for the Necrons (Warlord and Holding an objective).

By that stage I had 1 below half strength squad left, 2 rhinos, the havocs (in combat with the wraiths) and the land raider.

The game was good. I learnt a few things. Unfortunately the Thousand Sons did about as well as I was expecting, which was not very. They are quite good on an Alpha strike, but with their numbers they cannot weather the return fire very well. In the world of chaos and must challenge, Sorcerers are not all that good a choice as your warlord. The Tzeentch psychic powers are not very good. The basic power is probably the worst one as its strength is variable. Bolt of Tzeentch did Ok for me, in that it took a wound off the Destroyer lord and killed 2 warriors and an immortal during the whole game.

Sadly I think that overall I would have been better off with a force of normal CSM's with a mark, rather than the Thousand sons. The thousand sons are really expensive and I could only fit in the two troop choices. This did not help with with holding objectives, or the potential to hold objectives.

Oh well. Next week I shall try again.

Some pictures are coming shortly.

Cheers.

Some pics from the already painted Night Goblins

Well, painting is going Ok on the night goblin archers.

I will post pics of my progress on Friday, but for now, here are a couple of photos of some of the more interesting units from my Night goblin force.

First up is the trolls. 6 Trolls of the stone kind. I like the look of the stone trolls more than the river trolls.

Then it is the squig hoppers and their boss.

Not much of an update I know, but hopefully some progress in Friday's update.

Cheers.

Sick of Tyranids - Time for a change

Back to a project that I had left for a while.

Well, I am a little sick of painting white Tyranids at the moment. So I thought that I would move back to a previous army project of mine.

Which is my Night Goblin horde. I actually have around half of this painted now. Which sounds good, but with 300 odd Night Goblins painted and only being at the half way point is a little sad.

Not sure why I keep going for the horde armies when I am quite a slow painter, but I do like how they look when they are all ranked up.

So this is a unit that I had started and then left almost complete. I finished off the last 14 of them and this unit of 50 is now done.

No that they are done, I am moving onto their accompanying archer unit. This is the start of the unit of 20 of them.

The first half of the unit is now undercoated - onwards to painted glory!


Photos of the rest of the army will be uploaded slowly, but it so far consists of the following fully painted models / units:

• Skarsnick
• 4 Night goblin shaman
• 2 Night goblin big bosses
• 1 Night goblin big boss w/ spear on giant cave squig
• 50 Night goblins w/ spears and command group
• 50 Night goblins w/ spears and command group
• 50 Night goblins w/ hand weapons and command group
• 100 Night goblins w/ spears and command group
• 4 units of 20 Night goblin archers w/ command group
• 10 Squig hoppers
• 25 Squig Herd - 15 squigs, 10 herders
• 11 Night goblin fanatics
• 6 Stone trolls

Still to go are:

• 1 Night goblin shaman
• 2 Night goblin big bosses, one with army standard
• 1 Night goblin boss w/ hand weapon on giant cave squig
• 50 Night goblins with hand weapons and full command group
• 100 Night goblins with hand weapons and fill command group
• 4 units of 20 Night goblin archers w/ full command group
• 10 squig hoppers
• 25 Squig Herd - 15 squigs, 10 herders
• 11 Night goblin fanatics
• 2 Mangler Squigs
• 6 Stone Trolls

And then we can start on the Orcs and then the normal Goblins for the army... I swear that I am not crazy... Well, not too much... Sigh.

Cheers.

Looking back to game again

I was discussing Confrontation on the weekend. And this lead to a goal to try and play the game again, as I have a fully painted wolfen force and my friend has his Scorpions of Dirz.

We did play a very small amount of this game when it was out. However not long after we started, Rackham began their decline into oblivion. And by a small amount, we played through the learn to play guide of the Initiation Set

To this day we cannot remember the victor in the one game that we played of it, however we do both remember having a lot of fun with it.

 

Unlike my usual choices for forces, I decided that I wanted a group of mighty headband warriors. In Confrontation, nothing says "Fist to the Face" like giant angry wolfen. So they are the force that I have. And they were one of the forces in the starter and initiation sets. Not the weak models, but mighty predators of blood, fang warriors and Onyx the Prowler. That is pretty hard hitting force there. Add in Syriac with summon Animae and the predators can become Ultimate predators and really lay about with both fists, feet, swords and teeth.

 

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the look at my Confrontation force.

 

I have only two models for unpainted, being a Worg and Irix the Ultimate (and still in boxes). I guess that I should try and get those painted at some point.

Oh, and in the interests of full disclosure, I didn't paint these models. They were painted by a good friend of mine, who I hope that I can convince to paint the last two models for as well.

I do have a number of Cynwalls as well, but they are neither painted or assembled. Another project for a later period of time.

Cheers.

Late again...

But I remembered to take a whole army photo first for my Tyranids.

Well, at least it is the whole army as is currently fully painted.

So now, onto my thoughts on the X-wing miniatures game.

I played both the intro mission and a further mission. Now, the second game was limited to the ships that I have so far, which is only a few extra Tie fighters and no extra rebel craft.

In the first intro mission, my two tie fighters were shot up by the Rebel pilot. Targetting system errors (ie I did not roll well) were not helped by tactical computer failures (ie I just plain played badly). But overall the game did assist me in learning how it all works, which is the main thing. Don't split up tie fighters...

In the second game, we used the full rules. It was quite a lot of fun and it really felt like a star wars style dog fight. The way that you allocate movements to your ships means that the tie fighters really do the large looping moves as seen in the movies and the x-wings are quite tough craft. Their target lock followed by plasma torpedoes is really vicious. However, for the loss of one TIE, in the second game I managed to shoot down the rebel scum and claim victory.

So far it is 1 game each for us.

The game itself has very nice components, which is something that Fantasy Flight do well. And I can see the game being quite interesting once slightly larger squadrons are used on each side. The characters included are excellent and do give you a range of different skill levels. However I can see that there is little point to not taking the very best pilots in each game, unless their points costs are too high. And pre-painted miniatures. YAY!

All in all, I am looking forward to playing it some more. Though as I am only purchasing Imperial craft myself, I will have to encourage my opponent to purchase some Rebel craft of his own.

Cheers.

Success... but only in a loose sense...

So on my painting stands currently are these fine xenomorphs...

Which means?

That I finished my second unit. YAY!

Yes, the 16 hormagaunts are now complete.

So two units in my army are done. Yikes, if only I had a HQ choice, I could have a fully painted minimum size force.

With only 10 models to go till 500 points of painted greatness, I can sadly see much distraction in my future.

Borderlands 2... Sigh, it is an ongoing (but really enjoyable) distraction.

Till Wednesday, when tales of my trial games of X-wing the Miniatures game will hopefully be forthcoming.

Cheers.