Progress on BA40K

With my renewed interest in 40K (setting, not system) I have been going through old boxes of spare models, and there have been a surprisingly large number of useful finds. For the Red Hammer marines I found a complete squad of 9 Blood Claws (Space Wolf assault troops), a marine bike, and a Cyclone Terminator. My brother also donated a squad of 4 scouts and a plasma gunner.

Two Blood Claw assault teams of 4

Attack bike, plasma cannon, captain (seen below painted), and cyclone terminator

Scout team

Captain Ulrik the Northman

It takes four thralls to get him battle ready. Three organise his weapons and armour, the fourth does his hair.

I now have far more marines than I would field in my preferred 600-800 point games, so any further additions will be just for unit variety.

I’ve also been thinking about how to organize force selection. Original WH40K has it’s system of HQ/Troop/Heavy Support etc. unit types. But that’s a bit more complicated than I would prefer, plus at the 600-800 point level it wouldn’t be much of a restriction. I’m also not a fan of Bolt Action’s system of allowing a force to have one each of AT gun, artillery, armoured car, tank, etc. In my opinion this manages to be simultaneously too restrictive and too permissive – having two AT guns is unrealistic, but having an AT gun, a tank, and a howitzer is fine?

My present thought is to tag certain unit choices as HQ, Troop, and Rare. When organizing a game players agree both number of points and number of Rares allowed (with 1 Rare per full 400 points being suggested). A force must have one HQ, two Troops, and cannot have more than the agree number of Rares. The units I currently have written for the Space Marine list are;

• Sergeant (HQ)
• Veteran Sergeant (HQ)
• Captain (HQ, Rare)
• Tactical Fireteam (Troop)
• Terminator Fireteam (Rare)
• Assault Fireteam
• Devastator Fireteam
• Rhino
• Land Speeder (Rare)

This is only about half the units in the WH40K marine codex (and likewise the Tyranid list so far only covers about half of their WH40K units) but I’d rather work on getting a modest selection of units done well than do a rush job covering everything. Next army list up is the Tau, thanks both to my finding a box of Fire Warriors in my spare models and a potential opponent mentioning an interest.

I See Red People

Like many wargamers I was introduced to the hobby through Warhammer 40,000. Also like many wargamers I eventually gave up on 40K’s crappy rules in disgust, and went on to play other games with better rules. But despite this I was always a fan of the WH40K setting, and although they virtually never see the table I kept my old Imperial Guard army boxed away in the back of the wardrobe. For a long time I have been looking for a good 28mm sci-fi skirmish system to use my 40K figures with, and now I think I may have found it.

The system in question is Bolt Action, and it ticked almost all the boxes – it’s 28mm (although I’m told it works at other scales too), the rules encourage sensible tactics, it’s fast and playable, and it has points buy army lists that give a decent first-approximation of balance. But it fails at the last requirement – it’s not sci-fi. Using Bolt Action to play 40K would require me to write new army lists, plus a few new rules to cover sci-fi stuff.

Challenge accepted!

A few weeks ago my brother and I played a couple of “proof of concept” games using my Imperial Guard versus his Tyranids. We simply used the existing BA army lists, and declared what things “counts as”. So for example my lascannon team counted as a PaK38, Vaughan’s Hive Tyrant counted as a captain and two bodyguards with SMGs, and so forth. It worked surprisingly well, but obviously some of the “counts-as” approximations didn’t quite fit, particularly for the Tyranids.

Over the next couple of weeks I sat down and wrote dedicated army lists for both the Tyranids and Space Marines. I used the existing BA lists as a guide (particularly for point costs), but unlike the “counts-as” experiment I was willing to change things and/or add new special rules. I also painted up a small Space Marine force;

The whole 650 point force

My Land-Speeder Muninn

A Tactical Fireteam

My Veteran Sergeant and his bodyguard

Missile launcher team with bodyguard

The colours are the same as my Epic marine army and one of my BFG fleets, so I can now field my Red Hammers chapter in skirmish-level, operational-level, and space combat games.

This afternoon Vaughan and I playtested the army lists I had written. We used 650 point lists, and rolled a Point Defense mission with the Tyranids attacking. Vaughan had a Hive Tyrant, a Carnifex, and brood of 2 Tyranid Warriors, 3 broods of 5 Termagaunts, and 2 broods of 5 Hormagaunts. Against this I had a veteran sergeant with bodyguard, a missile launcher marine with bodyguard, 3 tactical fireteams of 3 marines, and a Land Speeder.

Defense of the right-hand objective

Defense of the left-hand objective

Tyranid first wave

Vaughan chose to put his Carnifex and both Hormagaunt broods on flank marches. His preparatory bombardment meant almost all my units started the game with one or two pin markers. Annoyingly this meant that (despite being Veterans) all of my long range fire units failed their order tests, so Vaughan’s units simply ran up unharmed. As the Tyranids closed to within 24” during turns 2 and 3 my firing started to improve, and I eliminated about half of what Vaughan had on the table without losing a marine. Unfortunately, at the end of turn 3 his Carnifex turned up.

Carnifex blasting my Tac team with bio-plasma

Having eliminated the Tac team, it moved on towards my gunship

This 10 wound monstrosity proved a game-changer. By mid turn 5 it had eliminated one of my Tactical fireteams, and had charged into assault my Land Speeder. On top of this Vaughan’s other flank marches had showed up. One Hormagaunt brood was quickly destroyed by the missile launcher (although this took valuable firepower away from the Carnifex), while the other assaulted and destroyed the Tactical fireteam holding the left-hand objective. Thankfully the Carnifex lost the assault against the Land Speeder, failing a morale test against a 10. The game ended on turn 6 with each of us holding one of the objectives.

I am extremely pleased how this turned out. Things were as effective (and in the right ways) to match their 40K fluff. It was a very close, hard fought game and no units stood out as being too good/bad, so I’m going to leave the points as they are for now. The only two things that need tweaking are (A) the Land Speeder (I need to add Fast Vehicle and Skimmer rules), and (B) adjust how Tyranids interact with vehicles in close combat.

28mm Honvédség

With a lot of Bolt Action being played recently, I've decided it's about time I sat down and actually painted a force. The models (a platoon of Early War Germans, being used to represent Hungarian Motor Rifles) were purchased a while ago, but have been sitting around awaiting a burst of enthusiasm. Having taken a few days off work, now seemed a perfect time to make a start on them. Currently I have two squads and a MG team painted, with the third squad and officer still to go.

My Hungarian Infantry Platoon

The unpainted officer and his bodyguard

Once the painting is done the next question will be how to field them. I'm using the German army list in the main rulebook, but I haven't decided yet how to organise and equip them. Open questions;

•  Is it better to field lots of smaller units, or fewer large ones? Specifically should I have three squads of 10, or six squads of 5. The points costs are linear, so I'm inclined towards more small units.
•  Are bolt-action rifles competitive? My flatmate Nathan is firmly convinced assault rifles are better. But I've run the numbers and I think the humble rifle is just as good for it's cost.
•  How good is Veteran status? I'm going to try the army out as Regular first, but I may also try Veteran at some point. 
•  What rank should the officer be?

For my first few games I'm going to try the following list;

•  First Lieutenant (Fohadnagy) accompanied by 2 SMGs  
•  Infantry Squad with 5 rifles and AT grenades             
•  Infantry Squad with 2 LMG and 1 rifle            
•  Infantry Squad with 5 rifles and AT grenades          
•  Infantry Squad with 2 LMG and 1 rifle          
•  Infantry Squad with 5 rifles and AT grenades       
•  Infantry Squad with 2 LMG and 1 rifle         
•  MMG Team        

... all Regular, and coming to a total of 595 points. Expanding this towards 1000 points, I'd look at adding a medium mortar and/or a 75mm infantry gun. I'd like to avoid taking a tank if I can, which may mean having to grab a couple more squads of infantry.

Gold Five Standing By

Yet again I have been led into temptation by my fellow wargamers. After seeing Adam's blog post on the X-Wing miniatures game I decided to give it a closer look, and ended up walking out of Comics Compulsion with both the core set and the Y-Wing expansion. Fortunately one of the strengths of X-Wing is it is light on time commitment and not too bad on the wallet.

The models (pictured with some of the WotC collectable ships for size comparison) come pre-painted. You need around 4-6 fighters for the suggested 100 point game size. After playing a few games (a couple against my brother, one against my flatmate) I agree with Adam's assessment - it's a neat little beer and pretzels game, a bit limited in tactical depth but good for quick and fun games. The main problem it has at the moment is the lack of starship types. There are currently only the X-Wing, Y-Wing, TIE, and TIE Advanced available (and the local store is sold out of the Y-Wing and TIE Advanced). But this will be sorted as FFG release more ship types.

While the models are prepaints I'm mulling the idea of changing the colour areas to customize my fighters. The yellow on the Y-Wings would become gray, and the red on one of my X-Wings would become pink (link for those who don't get the second reference).

Despite this new temptation however I have made good progress on my 28mm Hungarians, finishing off a complete squad plus an armoured vehicle...

The walker is a "Heinrich" light walker from the Dust Warfare range. While I don't expect to field this guy very often (locally people are more interested in real-history WW2, rather than Weird War 2) it is a cool looking model and something to stand in as a (temporary) centerpiece for the force until I decide on what real-world centerpiece I want (probably either a T-38 or a 75mm infantry gun). Now I just have to wait for the rest of my infantry to arrive and start getting some games in.

Huzzar for 28mm!

World War II gaming in 28mm scale is something that has been simmering in the local group for a while now. A few different systems have been played, including Operation Squad and a WW2 mod of the Force on Force rules.

The system that I'm finding the most interesting is Bolt Action from Warlord Games. Watching Jamie and Nathan play a small (500 pt) game yesterday seemed to confirm my first impression from reading the rules; Bolt Action is a nice simple system, light on detail, but fast and playable. Encouraged by this, I sat down this afternoon and painted a first section of infantry;

The models are Warlord Games early war Germans, which I am painting as Hungarians.  The last photo shows all the infantry I currently have. A 600-800 point game of Bolt Action would involve a platoon or so of infantry, so I've just ordered two more squads, an MG34 team, and the main rulebook.