Wednesday 29 July 2009

Painting Help Needed! Valkyrie hold up!

Hi guys, im having a nightmare with my valkyrie paint-scheme.

my tanks were all grey, on a black undercoat, very easy to do.

my valks however, i'd like them to be white, but! spraying them white has left me very dissapointed. the finish is all powdery, its very thick and full of bobly gaps. its disgusting!

oh what to do what to do!

i think i can pretty much count myself out for the iron halo flying base painting competition.

Monday 20 July 2009

Confessions of an Imperial Tactician

okay, first things first, i lost the tournement terribly

18th place....... of 18

but in my defence this was the first time i'd picked up the dice in about 5 years

so a rundown of the weekend: 1500 points, normal 5th edition rules and missions

Game 1 - (keeping in mind this is my first game in 5 years) i pit the 88th against an ork army controlled by the guy who won last years tournement... a massive biker squadron leaps accross the table, and destroys everything. and some insane amount of shooting wipes everything else out. a total annihilation

Game 2 - im pitted against a chaos army. this game was hard fought, and a combination of me having not much in the way of landraider killing power, and my badly thought out objective placement, he won, but with not so much of an annihilation as the first game and was great fun, mostly down to my opponent being a great laugh and we were very match minded about blast and cover always giving each other the benefit of the doubt.

i then went to work (a local boozer i bartend) for the evening. after work i am convinced to start and finish a bottle of rum

Game 3 - i don't know, i was asleep through this... although apparently it would have been against an imperial guard army

i made it in for

Game 4 - Chaos again. at this time i was 17th and he was 18th ranking. the game was great fun,

down to some horrendous dice rolling on his part (including his lord/sorceror thing missing with all 5 of his attacks in cc - he only needed 2+ aswell...) he failed to significantly damage my army to any real extent

my 20 conscripts worked brilliantly in this game, killing everything that they encountered, FRFSRF was a briliant help in blatting chaos marines. in fact they ended the game at still 13 in number. my sentinal was a great help dropping plasma blasts all over the place.

the executioner spent the game immobilised due to my stupid plan to drive it through difficult terrain, but still dropped plenty of plasma. but the medusa spent the game unharmed

the killing blow was my own stupid fault. i moved my guardsmen too far away from one of my own objectives, and forgetting the game might end on turn 5 i didnt get any units close enough to an enemy objective to contest it (which my valkyrie could possibly have done)


so lessons learnt, i'm looking forward to next year, if im not helping run the show that is. and looking forward to my next games.



on a completely different note. i won a £30 voucher in the raffle. so i instanly bought myself £30 worth of hasslefree miniatures which i have been eyeing up for a while and had started writing up a rule system for. which you can follow on yet another blog

Wednesday 8 July 2009

Getting there... Conscripting, Promotions and Tournement prep

Well ive just finished putting together 18 more conscripts, i'm high as a kite on plastic glue solvent and thought i'd take a break by posting up last nights work aswell

so now billy no-mates my test conscript has a bunch of new-blood buddies

they'll get a trial by fire at the tournement in 9 days (you'll notice the counter i added just to get me going)


Last night i sat down with the new command squad sprue and set about making another command squadto accompany the Tsar.


medic, vox, plasma gunner, standard bearer and bodyguard


and a note to GW, why didnt they supply 1 standard blank, and the other detailed? its a bloody pain trying to cut/file/sand off the detailing for any army that isnt cadian.

ive kept the medic simple, and the vox doesnt use any of the vox parts in the comand squad sprue (you'll find out why in just a second)

"so where did the commander bits and the vox bits go?"
here they are!

Master of ordinance, and Officer of the Fleet
just to show you the size of the master of ordinance's antennae


(its been taken from the tank accessory sprue)


he's going to act as a forward observer to the Artillery batteries buried around the city
The officer of the Fleet i decided should be wearing a gas mask as he wouldnt have been on planet when the virus bombing took place. i had to extend he piping around his body otherwise the rebreather would have been over his medals



Right! onto painting!

[edit! i forgot, i've also recieved my IronHalo Valkyrie bases (the new oval ones). they look fantastic, i'll post up more on this in the next few days]
Cheers,
TSINI

Monday 6 July 2009

TSAR HUZZAH!! and Tournement Deadline, dun dun dun!

Straight to Business!


This is the newly elected High Tsar of Borlina, my latest addition to the Lucky 88th


"Why remove the bolt pistol and power sword from the Commissar Lord model and replace with two puny laspistols?" i hear you cry, well he's a Creed count as model, so he's weilding the twin 'hot-shot' laspistols, hence the cables running to the pistol mags

i've also just got my hands on the 40k basing kit hence the rather busy base, its got a heretics head on it, so i'm happy.
you can see from the pose he's suposed to be a more hands on commander than creed, to match my play style, theres no sitting back and shooting with my commanders, they get into the thick of it.

in fact i like this model so much, i'm going to take him along to a local gaming event in 2 weeks even if it means i have to sacrifice gaming effectiveness for cool points heavy models.

Yes i've been invited along to a 40k competition at ATTACK 2009 a local event hosted by the great guys of DDWG (devizes and district wargaming) in a couple of weeks time

its a 1500 point, 2 game per day (for 2 days) tournament and as i think it can be done and dusted pretty quickly, it will give me ample time to wander around the rest of the event and check out all the lovely resin scenery and metal figures that the local companies will be selling plus the demonstration games which i love so much. oh and a few beers (or in my case rough cider oo-arr) :D


which leads us nicely onto the force i wish to take along with me.

working from bottom left in a clockwise direction

Borlina Command : Tsar (creed), bodyguard, officer of the fleet, regimental standard, medic, vox, plasmagun
250 points

Veterans: 2 grenade launchers, flamer, autocannon, vox, vet sgt with plasma pistol & power sword
120 points

Leman Russ Executioner with lascannon
205 points

Borlina Air Service (Stormtroopers):(10 men) flamer, grenade launcher, sgt with power sword
185 points

Valkyrie: multilaser, hellstrike missiles [Oooooh shiny and white :)]
100 points

Medusa: enclosed crew compartment
150 points

Armoured Sentinal: plasma cannon
75 points

Platoon command: medic, vox, missile launcher, commander with bolt pistol, commissar with powersword & plasma pistol
137 points

heavy weapon squad: 3 autocannons
75 points

Infantry squad 1: grenade launcher, missile launcher
75 points

Infantry squad 2: grenade launcher, missile launcher
75 points

Conscripts: 20 men
80 points

total: umm 1527 d'oh!! 27 points over

i may have to drop either the officer of the fleet to be 3 points under, or swap the sentinal for a cyclops demo tank to be 23 points under.

unless anyone has a better idea

another thing i could do would be to remove one of the superflous medics in the command squads, but then it just wouldn't look right would it?

let me knowwhat you think, any tactical advice would be much appreciated
as i'm obsessed on the idea of taking my creed stand in, i'd like to hear some ideas on how best to use his special rules.

i was thinking about marching my conscripts on from a side table edge just to be a pain :D they might be able to act as cover for my stormtroopers who will fly in on a valkyrie from a table edge i imagine



Anyway, cheers for reading, i have to get on and paint it all up in time!
TSINI

slideshow

The Lucky 88th History

The Lucky 88th

The Royal planet of Borlina is just off the Cadian gate, once a thriving hive planet with a high percentage of royal and rich descendants from Terra itself. Now a diseased, war torn hell hole, home to a twisted secret the Inquisition would rather not recount.

The Curse of Borlina

During a Chaos incursion (Blood & Bile of the Rich Invasion 960.M41) Inquisitor Payne ordered the Orbital Bombardment of the entire planet, choosing Viral Bombing as the means of execution of the foul beasts and corrupted Governors.
Unfortunately the Borlina PDFs were also sentenced to death, whilst deeply in conflict with the Chaos forces.
Under pressure from Inquisitor Rayvenn (of the Black Storm), Inquisitor Payne mercifully ordered areas with high concentrations of loyal forces to be bombed with a weaker strain of the virus. Whilst the planet was bombed with Virus 1, a highly corrosive airborne agent which subsides after 1 day. Virus 13 (a Plague like virus with no corrosive element) was deemed legal for use over loyalist troops, who were forewarned, advised to find cover and don gas equipment. Low on supplies, deep in conflict and without gas equipment the lucky 88th miraculously fought off Virus 13 as if it was a bad case of flu.

Affirmation

A nearby Commissariat fleet jumped at the opportunity to put together their own personal force and made planet fall to gather together the pockets of loyal troops into a fighting regiment. This proved quite difficult, requiring the aid of the nearby Space Marine chapters (“Dragon Marines” and “Black Storm”) to seek out loyal forces.

The largest surviving regiment had barricaded themselves in the Master Palace, which impressed the commissariat no end, for it was a disease ridden nightmare, the very palace itself was a Nurgle infested monstrocity.
Having already adopted the name “Lucky 88th” due to the large amount of survivors from the 88th regiment the troops added a Lucky Ace symbol to their armour and vehicles, much to the annoyance of the commissariat who view it as graffiti and unofficial. In return the more senior commissars keep their gas-masks on when in combat to stir anger into the men, making them fight harder for the injustice caused to them. Lower Commissars tend not to test such practises, wary of the men turning on them when cut off from high command.

Recruitment: The Virus Run

Any outsider coming into contact with any surviving member of the Borlina virus attacks must first be inoculated from the infectious version of the virus which can be fatal to weaker immune systems. New Recruits however are not so lucky. Firstly they are put through a year of heavy training wearing gas masks. Graduation into the Lucky 88th is only complete after a gruelling month fighting through the Virus Run, a heavily infected area of the former Borlingrav Palace, now a Bastion of pestilence and disease. The survivors of this infamous death zone gain the respect of the rest of the regiment, except for the veterans who hate all outsiders including the commissariat.