An Apocalypse game sort of

A few week's back I headed over to Alan's house for a day of gaming, I'm not sure if calling it an apocalypse game would be right even though it was 5k per player as there was none of the big things that make apocalypse what it is, kind of like having a fish & chips without the fish so we'll just call it a big game of 40K.

That's not to take anything away from what was a very enjoyable day's gaming with Alan & myself squaring off against Pearce & Ger with Alan & myself defending a imperial city from the forces of chaos, the mission & rules for it were the brainchild of Pearce & a good job he did on it to.

So the armies in use on that day were csm & ig (Ger) csm (Pearce) da (Alan) sob, sm & ig (myself), now these sort of games are what I love to play in where I feel like my man & women dollies  are going out to die for a reason.

The mission was as I said the defence of the city with each building Alan & myself held at the end worth a point & each oue the the lads destroyed worth a point to them, plus you got a point for any hq ic you killed in close combat, the walls & buildings had special rules for destroying them & also to give us a 5++ from the hell turkeys.

The first toe to toe was to be my Vulken & Ger's biker nurgle biker lord both doing a wound each only for me the low roller that I am failing a toughness test with a roll of a 5 for taking a wound from the black mace, it was going to be a long day.

Next ic to fall was my Lord Commissar who had bravely (foolishly) taken to the trench's with 30 man guard squad only to be sliced & diced by the cut troth himself Huron Blackheart, this day was getting longer & longer.

I was to be redeemed some bit be the blessed lady herself Saint Celestine who gave Huron some pay back maybe the day won't be so long after all, of coarse all this butchery was carried out to the sound of vindicetor shells & manticore rockets smashing into the walls, as the chaos forces tried to brake into the city

For a while it looked liked the walls just might hold, but even the best of build walls can only take so much of this kind of hammering  & so it was that they finally fell, but the forces of the imperium are made of stronger stuff then there walls.

As the chaos forces started to spill through the gaps the imperial force under the lead ship of Belial where to stand tall beating back the chaos scum time & time again in defence of the city, it was in these close quarters
fighting that the leader of the chaos forces Abaddon was to fall under a hail of bullets.

But still the bloodbath continued inside & out side of the walls with no quarter asked or given, from the bark of bolters to the screaming of exorcist missiles the slaughter went on long into the night.

True hero's one & all from the lowly guardsman to the mighty space marine the members of the imperial forces gave their all in the name of the Emperor of man kind & when the dust had settled they still held most of the city in tacked but at the price of many a falling hero.

With the chaos forces bring down one more building as their parting shot meaning we where all to go home with our honor in tacked with the score for the game 4pts each.

My thanks to Alan for his help in the defence of the city & the photo's, to Pearce for a great & well taught out mission & to Ger for making that last dice roll of 6 to get the draw to bring to an end a great days gaming well done lads it was a blast.

How to combi-plasma

This is a double post with the first part how to make a combi-plasma & the second questioning my mental health, but more on that later first up the combi-plasma.
To do this you'll need a bolter & a plasma pistol like those in the picture below.

You need to remove the muzzle (keep it) & the other pieces on the front of the bolter & level off the top of it back as far as the rectangular piece.
On the plasma pistol you need to cut along the length of it just below the coil until you get to the little groove that runs a round the pistol, you then need to cut along this groove from the bottom until your to cuts join up.

The picture above shows you what the two guns should look like at this point, you now need to fit them together I found when doing it I had to cut a little bit off the rectangle.

When your happy with the fit glue them together & glue the muzzle back on & there you have it a combi-plasma.
Now the second part of the post, I was playing Greg in the shop the other night when he told me he thinks I mad & judging from what I've been doing to some rhino's since then I think I've got to agree with him.
So what is this madness you ask, well I've decided to paint the detail on the inside of the rhinos

Now that in it's self wouldn't be enough to fine me guilty of insanity, but that isn't the whole of it.

I went one step or two beyond that with one of them.

In fact I now know I'm mad but ah well it could be worst.

So what do you guys think is Greg right ?

A new chapter

I love space marines & even though I can't make a 3+ save to save my space marines life I still like to play these guys.

So with my old marine army looking it age & half of it sold off from when I was thinking of getting out of the hobby & paints no longer available, I decided to do a new one & unlike the last one where a lot of the models where painted in a rush for tournaments & apoc games.
So this one will be on the slow burner so to speak with the limit on time been my age but hopefully I'll have enough time to get it done.

So I glued a few of the clip together marines to a sprue leaving off the bolter & the back pack, which I drilled  little holes in to in places that won't be seen & stuck them on a paper clip, drilling out the bolters at the same time.

I made up this so I could stick the clips to so they won't be falling over when the paint was wet.

It works like so, I undercoated everything black with gw spray & mixed the paint the paint for my spray gun , but first I taped up the bolters & the back packs so I could spray the skulls white which in hind sight was not worth the effort.

The colour I need was a charcoal gray so I mixed 4 parts base gray to 1 part black, the paint I used is model air

.I painted the eyes red & yellow on the shoulder pad trims, eagle & a stripe on the helmet & right knee.

The Shoulder pad was painted black & a yellow stripe was add to the bolter & the model was given a wash of  2 parts gw nuln oil & 1 part water.

Added some detail & high lights & based it on some red slate painting the trim of the base black & there he is my first Red Scorpion space marine, I now need to order some transfer sheets from FW.

Is fellow is from the first tactical squad 6th company, but he won't be seen action any time soon as is a slow project
A few more wip pictures below.

40K universe there's so much in it

A long time back a bunch of very talented people got together & created the 40k universe & to the best of my knowledge done something that had never been done in table top gaming before.

The worlds & the races they invented have stood the test of time & has created a multi-million pound corporation.
So lets go back to the grim dark distance pasted & have a look, GW was a very different company then then it is to day, now I not going to say that back then it wasn't about making money because very business has to make money or they go out of business.
The different I think in them days was that the people running the company then where not as business mined as they are to day, which meant games designers had more freedom then they do today.

Anyway enough of all of that, lets have a look & see what did the games designers ever do for us ? well a lot to be honest as the 40K universe they created wasn't just about big battle's on planets it was a lot deeper then that.
A universe that was so weird & wonderful that players of the games just fell in love with it, games such as Epic which is a 6mm game of huge armies where space marines deploy in whole companies & titans roam freely across the table.

small is beautiful 

Now as I said in my last post I love apocalypse but if you really want to capture the feel of massive armies fighting one another then epic is that very thing that because of size & price of models  apocalypse can't be.

FW has just released IA 3 the Taros campaign, but for anyone who never seen the 1ft ed the big battles in the book are games of epic not apocalypse, also in this book are missions for  Battle fleet Gothic.

I read in the rule book for battle fleet grothic that it is not really set at a scale because of sizes that these ships are meant to be & the sizes of plants & other things, but the models are like in epic none the less small.

A game where space ships do battle with one another in the cold dark void of space & a very big part of the 40k universe, how else are those big armies going to get from one planet to another to do battle if there is no spaceships for them to go in ?

Next up the real elephant in the room Inquisitor a game set at 54mm scale which meant you got very detailed models a real painters dream & a game like battle fleet gothic where you would only ever have a couple of models on the table.

your an odd size

Inquisitor a game that's like across between a table top game & a role playing game, a game that took the inquisitor away from the front lines & into a more murkier setting.

Oddly enough Inquisitor is more popular now then it ever was with people now playing it at 28mm.
Another one set away from the big inter galactic battles was Necromunda, with these games taking place in the lower reaches of the massive hive cities of the 40K universe where gangs battled it out for survival.

Like Inquisitor Necromunda gave the players a feel of live in the 40K universe if you weren't out dieing on the front lines & again a game of few models.
 Spacehulk the last of the 40K giants (I know there was space crusade & some others) again a very different game as it's is unlike the others & ia a board game.

A simple but none the less a very enjoyable game to play that pitches terminators against geanstealers in the confined rooms & corridors of spaceships.

A great way of getting new players into the hobby as the rules are very few unlike 40K where the rule book can seem very intimidating.

sometimes there are things more scary inside spacehulks then geanseaters

Sadly GW have dropped all of the games in the 40K universe except for 40K its self & while from a business point of view I can understand why, I think for future gamers when they read books like the Taros campaign are going to feel cheated that they don't have the option to play battle fleet gothic, or when reading books from the black library some of the other games.

Apocalypse is returning

Apocalypse is  been regigged & relaunched to bring it into line with 6th ed 40K, but will we notice ?
Gw's best ever expansion Apocalypse gives you a chance to get out the big guns & what ever else you have in you collation, things like the other 3 tactual squads that never seem to get used have their day in the sun.

Maybe he won't see us

I for one love apocalypse & can remember it first launch & GW's first big kit the baneblade which until then was FW only, they also released a lot of big armies box sets at the time things like a set of 10 Leman Russ's which you could field as the Emperor's fist tank company formation.

You better be a high roller.

It also gave you a chance to use flyer's, titans & other cool FW units like the hydra flak-tank for 200pts I might add, still how else where you going to shoot down them plains ?
Now as I've already said I love playing apocalypse, the ideal way for me is 4 players with between 5 or 6k pts per player & a good GM running the show a perfect way to spend the day gaming.

Right who order the pizza 

That was all in the pasted & now I sit here wondering what 2snd ed apoc is going to bring ? lets be honest the game of 40k has moved on a lot since apoc made its grand entrance, we now have flyers the eldar have just got a model that I belive is 9inchs tall the price of a lot of units in the game have come down so much that many of them are less the half of what they once where not so long ago.

The apocalypse is coming the end is nigh

My dark apostle I can now have him & 100 csm on the table at 1500pts with some pts to spare for some special weapons, remember when the guy below was 26pts ? I do & it wasn't back in the days of RT.

btw I'm looking of one of these old bloodletters if anyone has one to spare.

At the end of the day the big difference will be what it has always been the real trill of apoc the killing power of some of the big hitters, ever seen about 30 GK die to just one shot from a weapon ? I have & by is it ever fun, or laugh as a whole IG army charges a gargantuan creature because some sneaky daemon player put a spell on them.

How will your Emperor protect you now ?

So as I sit here writing this post I look forward to many days of fun playing 2snd ed apoc, even if an IG player can now have 9 Leman Russ's in a normal game of 40k it still not the same as haven 10 in the one squad, so dust off the big guy's & rally the troops for something big is coming & it' going to be fun fun fun.

Some times size does matter.

To the spaceship yards

To the spaceship yards or where ever it is that nids go to build or grow their ships.

Now to be honest I think I've only ever played battle fleet gothic twice & certainly no more three times, & yet one of my fondest moments in table top gaming came playing this game.

I was playing Darragh at the time & if my memory severs me right with my main ship unable to shot & on fire with him closing in for the kill, I looked a cross the table at Darragh & declared ramming speed & for that one brief moment felt like Captain Jean-Luc |Picard of star trek.

Building a nid fleet is something I've planed to do for a long time now, after all how is Nagaina meant to devour the Galaxy if it has no ships ?

This doesn't mean I'm about to start playing battle fleet gothic any time soon at least I don't think I am but hell who knows.

So then why build a fleet for a game you don't play you might very well ask ? well the answer is quiet simple really, its a modelling opportunity & a part from the paints & glue a free one at that.

In 40K you can't really make a lot of things for nids as they don't have tanks or weapons platforms like other races, as everything in the army is a living organism but oddly enough the very thing that makes it haed to do stuff for them in 40K is the very thing that makes it easy to make a fleet for them.

As these are living things they don't have to comform to the normal rules of spaceships & can just come in any shape or size you like & just like in 40K where the weapons are a living part of the nid so to is it a part of the ship.

A simple & enjoyable little project to do with the whole thing from start to finish taking less then two days I really am very happy with the results.

So now that Hive Fleet Nagaina has the means to transcend the galaxy let the feeding commence.

And the new addistion to the fleet my 5th grandchild Theo who was born yesterday.