Imperial Guard - part XXII - Tank factory part II

So while painting a bit on my Russ and Chimera, I get to finish my magnetization of my Mantacore, so now this is done and ready for the painting table.

I decided to magnetize both the missiles on top of the rack (to show how many had been fired) and the frame for them as well to make it more manageable in storage. I did not want to have a big and quite fragile thing sticking up from the foam just to be broken. I hope that this will keep that from happening.

Other than that I’ve left some pieces off, the pilot and the hatch he’s sitting under. I want to be able to get paint in there, so they had to stay out for the moment.

Here you have some pictures of the whole thing assembled

The pilot in his little cabin

All the parts that can be taken off

Now I’m working on the Russ and Chimera, I’m going for having them completed before Sunday when I hope that I’ll get a game or two in.

Imperial Guard - part XXI - Tank factory

I have a few tanks waiting to get done, so I've finally gotten around to actually get them prepared to get them painted.
So I got a little bit of building and cleaning factory going and got my last old Russ tank cleaned and another Chimera built.

I took the opportunity to magnetize as much as I could on both of the tanks, it was far easier on the chimera as that was built form the start, the Russ was as usual with my old vehicles was covered in layer upon layer of paint, so the cleaning process did take over two months and still I could not get all the paint off it. But I did get the sponsorns of, and got them magnetized, and I got the old bulldozer blade off as well, so that I could add magnets to take one of the new ones.
In the end the cleaning and building was a pain, but it got done and now the tank has taken the first spray layers and the first fields of green added.

The chimera was a more straight forward affair as it was new in box. This was also the first new tank I put together, and I must say that the addition of small groves to place the tank tracks in make the whole track businesses a breeze to do.
Other than that the assembly was straight forward, there wasn't any problems with fitting the things together, the parts that was any point to magnetize was done so without any problems. The only thing was that the base for the turret guns was the same for the flamer and multilaser, so without doing a whole lot of extra work I could note make them both fit, so instead I went for only the multilaser and left the flamer to be done so it could be fitted to the Russ instead. Not really the weapon of choice, but now I can use it if I want.

Here are some pictures of the two of them all ready and spray painted and with the first of the green fields added.

 

And some pictures of the Russ with its options

The chimera and it's options

I also have a Manticore on they way, I still have some magnets to fit, but that will be done quite soon I hope

40k 6th - Take III

Last week I played another game of 40k, my third game so far, this time it was a 1750 point battle against some Space Marines, led by Peder Cantor and his horde of Sternguard marines.

I didn't take as many pictures as I should have, I hardly took any at all to be frank.

I had an army with lots of tanks, trying this out if it would work at all, so my army looked like this

1 Command squad

1 Platoon with 2 squads (Flamer)

1 Platoon with 2 Squads (Grenade Launcher)

3 Heavy weapon squads (AC, 2xML)

2 Veteran squads in Chimera (3xplasma)

1 Hell hound

2 Leman Russ tanks

1 Demolisher

1 Basilisk

And I met the following marines;

Pedor Cantor

Techmarine with thunderfire cannon

2 Sternguard squads in Rhinos

2 Tactical squads in Razorbacks

2 Vindicators

2 Typhoon landspeeders

1 Stormtalon

The game was The Scouring with Hammer and Anvil deployment, and the first turn was covered in darkness. Here I was a bit unlucky, and the marines got the warlord trait that gave them move though cover and stealth in ruins, and most of the board was ruins…


The setup for my part was mostly a gigantic blob of tanks and men lined up all across the deployment, while the marines was a bit mot fiddly and hid most things in the back with the exception of the vindicators that was deployed far forward ready to counter my Russes.


Guard deployment

The first turn was to the guard, but as it was night the first turn, there was not that much effective shooting. The only notable exception was the baselisk that lobed a grenade high in the air and hit one of the razorbacks and a land speeder in the back, and managed to immobilize them both.
Other than that there was a few shots taken against the vindicators, but other than a hullpoint of damage on one of them there wasn't much action


Advancing tanks

Vindicators ready to get some revenge

Artillery strike targets

During the Marines turn the vindicators advanced and fired on my Russes, only managing to do a single point of damage on one of them and shaking it, and even Pedor with his orbital bombardment did nothing at all, the tanks really had a good day. More to the center of the table a rhino dashed forward and the sternguard in it jumped into a ruin and while one combat squad melted the Hellhound the other flamed the living daylights of a nearby infantry squad. The thunderfire cannon also obliterated most of another squad with highly accurate fire.


In the next guard turn the Russes advanced forward and with the combined fire from them and one of the veterans chimera and the missile teams, the damaged vindicator was taken down. In the center the other veterans advanced towards the ruin now filled with sternguards and together with another infantry squad, the autocannons and mostly everything else in the army one of the squads was reduced to only a single member.
The baselisk did not have its finest day, as it with a direct hit on Pedors razorback, managed to do absolutly nothing...

Burning vindicator

Advancing tanks

Far to living sternguards hiding in a ruin

In the marines next turn the remaining vindicator advanced again, but this time they didn't get any hit on the lumbering tanks in front of him, but to help out the Stormtalon zoomed in flying down the road and fire on the poor autocannon teams, that disappeared in a puff of red mist. On the other side of the board the landspeeders and both razorbacks sighted the demolisher, and managed to blow of the big gun, and bring it down to a single remaining hullpoint. The thunderfire once again shelled a poor infantry squad, but by hitting the dirt most of them survived the experience. In the center sternguards once again shot quite a lot of guardmen, among them one of the officers.


In the third turn for the guards most things stayed thight, the infanty in the center withdrew from the angry marines, taking cover in a crater that untill a few moments ago had contained autocannon teams. On the Russ side of things one of the veterans chimera drowe up, and disembarked, ready for some side shots in the remaining vindicator, wrecking it with accurate plasma fire. The russes fired on Pedros razorback, but they only got it shaken and removed a single hullpoint, the demolisher fired it's remaining lascannon and removed another. The baselisk took some help from the missile teams and removed two hullpoints from the rhino behind the now burning vindicator, and got a stunned result as well. 

Here my time ran out, I had to gather my things and quickly get to the buss for my ride home. All in all it didn't look to good for the guards, although I had one more victory point in objectives that I held the marines did have first blood, and one fast attack destroyed giving him another point, and the lookout for me to hold onto all the objectives seemed rather slim. So the victory was handed the the green Crimson Fists!


The Imperial Guard will be back...

Table building - part VIII - A new beginning

So, summer has come, and with it my vacation has come and now gone. There hasn’t been much hobby time during the last weeks as we have been involved in traveling to relatives, going to concerts and on top of that trying to paint the last few things on our house.

But in-between I’ve had a few moments to start building a new gaming table. I got into it after my last game at home (you can read about it here) and my current table is not really suited for games such as 40k. So a about 4’x6’ table is what I’ve stared.

I have made the table in 3 parts so far, each being about 2’x4’, they are really 122x56cm, based on the pre-cut MDF board I found in a semi local lumberyard. On these I glued down some 1” foam to use as the foundation of this whole thing.

I decided to make this as simple as possible, and not worrying about modularity to much or that I “had” to make it fit into any future more modular boards. This is something to get going, and having a table of good size for the occasional game that might arise around the house.

I have however not been that good at taking pictures of my work so far, mostly since it has been made in 5-10 min chunks stretched over three weeks now, but I took a few last night as I finished the painting on the first board.

Here is it after the first three layers of paint

Here it is after I got the last few layers of paint on it

The green felt mat I have is something they call fake grass in one of the stores around here (Rusta for you that has one close by) it comes in a roll that’s 120x200cm large, and if you look at the mesurments above that’s a bit less than what I would need to cover the whole board in one piece so I have had to do something to get it together. On this first table I made this marsh/river kind of thing, my thoughts are to stick some random plant-like things in there and cover it up with water effects. We’ll have to see how that turns out…

One of the other tables I made a hill on, nothing fancy at all, just something to break up the battlefield with.

This last one I haven’t done a lot to, but the thought is that I’m going to do a small lake/pond on it, and then a small stream leading to and perhaps even from it, I haven’t decided yet how I’m going to do it, I might end up doing nothing at all and just leaving it flat and green. 

To show some scale of the grass and the board I got hold of an old Ork scorcha models that I had in my garage, it would have to do =)

I still need to do the edges of the board, so far I have't decided if I should just take some tape and just paint it, or if I should get some thin wood and make a frame all around it. I have to think about that for I while, and I still have lots of work to do before I have to really do it.

Trying some more 40k 6th ed

This week my fiancées cousin stopped by, and while doing other stuff he wanted to try some game, and since the one I'm trying to learn is 40k, thats what we tried.

This was also the first chance I got to try out my new board that I've spent to much time with, and still not finished... As I have yet to complete all the little inserts for it, we had to make due, and fill up the table anyways. As the table is not that big, only about 3'x4' we used small armies at just a 1000 points each. One of them was my Imperial Guard and to face them I found some old Space Marines I painted during 3rd edition, so now I got them out, dusted them of and got counting at what I had.

We rolled of to see who would play what army, and I ended up with my guards again, and he got to play the marines. Since the table was so small I limited quite a lot how much infantry we both had, the marines I had to take what was available, but I got the guards a bit more armour than I should have under normal circumstances.

Since he hadn't played this ever, we started of with an extensive walk though of the rules, going though each phase and what you can and can't do. This took quite a while, and he did look more than a little bit confused at many points, but fortunately we had beer to calm the nerves with when it got to complicated.

When the game finaly got underway the board looked like this

Here out forces have deployed

Marines deployed and ready to cause some mischief

I had to use a chimera as a razorback, since I couldn't find the real one when we was to start. I know I have it someplace in all my boxes of miniatures...

The Imperial Guard forces, ready to kick some genetic enhanced monster butt

During the first turn the lead rhino got in the way of some serious guard firepower

In reality it was only a REALLY lucky shot with some auto cannons, but don't tell the marines that...

The disposition after the first IG turn

More marines

During the marines turn the most failed charge in gaming history was performed

The assault marines jumped forward, about 2 inches from the hell hound. The fail-marines started here bu missing with the plasma pistol, not content with that they charged the tank, priming grenades as they did so. At this time I was convinced my tank would make a nice little mushroom cloud, but no, all the marines missed their grenade attacks, and therefor leaving the tank unharmed.
But the fail was not complete, no, in the following turn I tank shocked my way out, wanting to place at least some distance between the angry marines and the tank, and make it possible for the infantry following up close behind to thin out their number. Well, they promptly failed the morale check and fled, only to bee gunned down to a man by the two infantry squads behind. I have never seen so many ones rolled for saves, ever.

This is the result;

After this things went downhill, fast. The marines could not make an armour save agains anything, and they started to die in droves while my guards advances slowly and tanking First rank, second rank fire orders, gunning the blue monsters down with a speed never seen on a gaming table.

Guncam from the Leman Russ, this tank had a bad day and did not hit with a single shot all game

A charge roll by the marines, just to set the tone for what they did during the whole game

The rest of the assault squad from the rhino, they spent 3 turns moving and running though the terrain, for a total move of 8"...

More marines trying to get forward to the guards

After about 4 turns of humiliating rolls we called it, and instead got the grill going and did our best to forget how the dice screwed him over.

But at least we had some great weather, and it was a beautifully day to sit out on the porch and play some miniature wargame.