Starfighters and Dark Elves

On Monday night Ben came round for a game of X-Wing. Ben was playing the evil Empire and I was running the noble Alliance to Restore the Republic. Our squadrons;

Ben

• Boba Fett (Slave I)
• Howlrunner (TIE) with determination
• Winged Gundark (TIE)
• Obsidian Squadron Pilot (TIE)

Me

• Horton Salm (Y-Wing) with R2-K5 and 2 proton torpedo
• Gray Squadron Pilot (Y-Wing)
• Prototype Pilot (A-Wing)
• Prototype Pilot (A-Wing)

The action was short and brutal. For the first few turns we simply closed head on. Horton's torpedo failed to inflict any damage on Howlrunner. The other Y-Wing scored a critical... but we drew a card with the Pilot characteristic, and Howlrunner had the Determination skill. New rules technicality I learned, when Determination is applied to a pilot critical it doesn't just turn the card face down (i.e. negate the crit but not the damage) it negates the result entirely. In response the TIEs stripped some shields from the Y-Wings.

During turn's 4 and 5 the squadrons had passed each other, and began circling for position. My Y-Wings carried on straight for another turn before beginning lazy turns back around - their ion turrets meant they didn't care what arc the enemy was in. To my right the A-Wings had turned 90 degrees to enter the main engagement from the side, while Ben's TIEs had turned or K-turned to get me back into his sights. The exception was Slave I, that continued straight ahead, putting it out of the action for a turn.

Combined fire from most of my squadron had taken out Howlrunner, and while a lot of my ships had taken shield hits I wasn't feeling too bad about the game. Then disaster - the now shieldless Horton got hit by two criticals from a single attack! Both were direct hits, so 2 points of damage became 4 and he had only a single point of damage remaining! In the following turn the remaining two TIEs finished both Horton and the other Y-Wing. While the A-Wings desperately fought on for a couple more turns, this round of shooting was decisive.

Progress on the Dark Elves

So not much success in X-Wing. However I've had better results making progress on my Dark Elf army. A productive week has seen both the Hydra and the spearman regiment re-based. Both are done in the standard basing scheme I use for most of my models. While I think this works well on small-medium base sizes, on the Hydra's larger base it looks a little sparse. The Hydra is this afternoon's project anyway (I'm going to heavily drydrush the underside in a lighter gray, and touch up some details) so I'll finish the basing as part of that.

(The ghost in the middle of the spear regiment is my Supreme Sorceress. Since I intend for her usually to accompany them I figured I'd do her base at the same time.)

New Year, New Rules

Happy new year to everybody! I hope everybody has a fun 2014 with many victories.

One of my new years resolutions for this year is to be less slack about my blogging - the initial goal is one post a week. So I'll get myself off to a good start by posting this.

Orks. in. Spaacccceeeeeeee!

On boxing day I went round to Mark's place for a game of Battlefleet Gothic. Mark was using his Orks (with the latest revisions of the fleet list) and I was trying out the Space Marine fleet list for the first time. Mark's blog covers the events of the battle pretty well, so I'm just going to post my pictures;

My fleet deployed in the center

"Ork battleship and carriers approaching to starboard sir!"

Overall situation.

My (temporarily) disabled capital ships move off, while the escorts provide cover

Escorts successfully cross the T against the Ork carriers, while the two battleships engage in a broadside duel.

Endgame. My battle-barge and strike cruisers picking off the Ork escort ships

This was a fun game, with some hilarious swings of luck for and against both sides. The marine list was interesting. Having armour 6+ all round makes it very tough (at least against gunnery) but I don't think it can dish out as much firepower as the Chaos fleet that I'm used to. Still, I think I'll use it for at least a couple more games to get a better feel for it.

Darkness Awakening

My first painting project for 2014 will be my old Dark Elf army for Warhammer Fantasy Battle. I used to play quite a bit of Warhammer back in 7th edition, and I'm a fan of the rules (although not so much a fan of GW). A couple of friends have been playing some WHFB (8th edition) lately, so I figured it was worth pulling the Dark Elves out of the cupboard and seeing what needs to be done to get it presentable. After a bit of reading to refresh my memory and familiarise myself with what has changed, here is what I'm considering for an initial 1200 point army;

• Supreme Sorceress, level 4 with 50 points of magic items
• Regiment of 24 Warriors with spears and full command
• Regiment of 12 Warriors with crossbows and musician
• Regiment of 12 Warriors with crossbows and musician
• Regiment of 18 Witch-Elves with full command
• War-Hydra

A lot of this is already painted, and the standard is actually better than I thought it was. The major thing I'm disappointed with is the basing - it looks like I got bored and just painted the bases brown! So re-doing all the basing is the first step, then the second step will be finishing off the Witch-Elf unit. Witch-Elves are actually quite a bit of effort to paint because each one is quite distinct, and they also have lots of mixed areas of clothes/skin/jewelery that is quite fiddly to do well. Still, one model at a time and I'll work my way through them.

An Unexpected Christmas...

Last night I dragged down a few boxes from the top of my wardrobe. They look like they were packed when I moved flat around two years ago, and may or may not have been opened since. Amoung all the trash and treasure the was a bunch of wargaming models I'd completely forgotten I had.


The most immediately useful for my current top project (Mid-War Hungarians) is a Stuka and a trio of Botond trucks, all BF resin models and undercoated black. I've always been short on trucks for the weapons platoons of my motor infantry company. But since I never used to take HMGs and the mortars very seldom wanted to move, it wasn't an issue. But with the improved utility of transports and the fact that I will now want to field my HMG platoon, I think I'll finish painting them up. Likewise the Stuka. I have sometimes taken air support before (in fact I already have a Stuka in Hungarian colours...somewhere) but with it's increased effectiveness in V3 I suspect I'll be taking it more often.

I also found my Hungarian cavalry unit. These aren't an option in Eastern Front unfortunately, but I'll keep them with the rest of the army in case Battlefront releases a MW version of the Huszár Harckocsizó list.

The next surprise find was a regiment of Witch-Elves, with 8 out of 19 painted. Now I'll rant against GW with the best of them, but I have always felt that WHFB (at least 7E, I haven't played 8th yet) was a decent ruleset. It gets let down by very poorly balanced army lists and GW's general business practises, but the core system was pretty good. I have promised my friend Haig (who is a big WHFB fan) to give 8th Edition at least a couple of games try.  And since Witch-Elves are one of the units that made me decide on Dark Elves as my army in the first place, it's going on the list of projects to be finished. Not as top priority, but it's definitely on the list.

And the last find... 25 IG Stormtroopers, five each painted in red and purple, the rest undercoated. Red squad also has an officer and a transport vehicle to accompany them, while purple squad has a dozen cultists and a chaos sorcerer.

Now I think WH40K is a terrible system with almost nothing to recommend it, but I've always been more of a sci-fi than a historical/fantasy fan, and I've just had 3 squads worth of quality future infantry effectively fall in my lap. So I'm now itching to find a good 28mm sci-fi skirmish game. Does anybody have any recommendations? I'll rule out Stargrunt - to avoid a rant I'll just say it's not what I'm looking for.