I need gaming partners!!!

So I had a practice game set up for today with one of my best friends. Now I understand things happen, but man do I have the worst luck trying to get in a game. The last 5 or 6 times I have scheduled a gaming day, it's been canceled by the other person. This time it was a surprise test for summer classes announced today for tomorrow. I've also experienced (from other people): back injury, school/paper, called in to work, dad says I need to help on the roof, and of course the AWESOME no call, no show!!! I live in Buffalo, and my closest gaming store is a 30-45 minute drive and they have open gaming on Mondays and Tuesdays, both of which don't work with my/my wife's(only one car) schedule. I have my own gaming board and most of my friends have schedules opposite of mine.

So the question is who lives around Buffalo,NY and wants to play? Anyone else have such problems? I think I need to do that thing in White Dwarf and try to get a local comic store selling GW.

I miss Adventures unleashed SOOOO much. Oh, the golden days. Maybe we need a craigslist for gaming partners.

Blood Angel Tourney army

Well I have a tourney at the local gaming store this Saturday, 2,000 points. I have decided to take my Blood Angels for a last spin before I focus on my allied guard for my Inquisition (another post). I've decided on a quick elite assault force. here's the list

Chaplain Malachi -100
Corbulo - 100
8 Death company (4 bought) - 120
5 Lightning Claw Terminators - 200
5 "tactical" veterans, 3 combi melta's, 2 melta guns, Drop Pod - 200
6th Squad, 5th Company, Power Fist, 3 Plasma Pistols - 320
7th Squad, 5th Company, Power Fist, 3 Plasma Pistols- 320
Vindicator, Dozer Blade, Storm Bolter- 135
Land Raider -250
Land Raider Crusader, Storm Bolter - 255

Total 2,000 points, 44 models, 2-4 Scoring Units, 11-13 Kill Points

The Death Company and Chaplain are in the Land Raider. The Terminators and Corbulo are in the Crusader. The plan is that I deploy the 2 land raiders with the vindicator in between (getting rid of side armour shots). The assault squads will deploy behind cover or come in reserve/deep strike depending on terrain and scenario. The veterans will deep strike with the drop pod and destroy the nastiest vehicle/monster alive when they come in. In objective games, I press as much as possible and everything except the assault squads are expendable. Most practice games I am in close combat second turn. I feel that there is not enough guys, but it has won 80% of it's games, only losing on last minute mistakes I made.

Any comments?

Crimson Fist Assault Termie WIP 1

Alright,
In my last post I mentioned painting up 30 terminators for the upcoming Planet Strike release... Well, I am almost done with a test model, I should have actually waited til I tidied it up a bit more but hey, I'm impatient sometimes. I will go back soon and touch up the highlights a bit, add either some static grass or other bitz, and perhaps add some washes to the skulls... anyhow, here are the WIP picts..
Left view:

Center view:

Right view: (oh yea whats missing here... a CF logo... coming next time! ha!)


And now for one of my HQ's (which I haven't named yet) Any thoughts folks on a Crimson Fists Terminator Captain name???? ha
Any how, this one still needs even more work but here is my WIP
Left view:

Center view:

Right view:


Comments and suggestions are completely suggested!
-Eric

The "Chip" - An Introduction

Well, I think I might be the last one to post here. But I have thought a long time about a first Blog. I was at this year's Adepticon and I was in a seminar (which one I don't recall, I had a "Headache"), and it came out that I have the Games Workshop "Chip" in my head. This referenced that I use GW paint, brushes, Spray Primer, I have the hand Flamer. I guess I need to eloborate on my "implant" and how I started gaming.

I made models as a kid and launched rockets with friends in middle school. In high school I started reading comic books (since I didn't get picked on enough for my thick glasses and A.V. nerd status). At the comic store I saw them playing Magic the Gathering, this was right around the time of Arabian Nights. I had a card store open open close to my house and I played there for a while till we outgrew that. Then we went to Adventures Unleashed.

As juniors in high school this place was pretty cool. Lots of room to play in, to rival what jester's has now. Sometimes there was a resturaunt next door to the store. Here we saw Games Workshop for the first time. It was me, Doug, Tom, and Dave Miller (R.I.P.). I started with Fantasy chaos and then moved to 40k with Dark Angels and then Imperial Guard(who played againgst nick's unfinished Angels when they first started). I had my gaming store and I was set. When Nick moved to GW things did not look good. I ended up working there myself 1998-1999. I got let go, but kept going to the store, some would say that was because of the chip, but I think it was loyalty

Working for Brenden was so much fun. I never had an older brother, but I kind of did with him for a while. He really believed in GW and was so enthusiastic about it, and it rubbed off on me. While I was there I got to play 3rd edition like 3 months before it came out. I went to the staff tournemant in Baltimore with Nick and learned Battlefleet Gothic from Robin Dews and Andy Chambers. GW added Gorka Morka and Mordiheim and people still played Necromunda. I bought a Mega Paint Set so I had a GW product for everything I needed.

I kept having people try to get me to play other games but the fiction for 40K is so good. I love the religious overtones of the Imperium and have loved seeing that get further explored in the Horus Heresy books. Every day I look through a codex or paint or play a game.

I got married in 2007 and it has severly changed my gaming habits. My wife and I live in the City of Buffalo and work full time professional jobs. We share one car and the closest gaming store is over 30 minutes away. Going out there is pretty much an all day afair. Because of that I usually go out to a tournament so I can get 3 games in on one day. Plus with a tournament, I use the same army 3 times and I get to try out stuff a few times and see how it works. I am so horrible with money that my wife has me on an allowence so I almost never get to buy models, so tourneys are my way to "gamble" on new models. I usually place, but I have never won, in like 20 times. It is frustrating some times, but I usually win more games than I lose.

I have a company and a half of Blood Angels, 5,000 points of Inquisition, a Pre Heresy World Eaters Army, a small Imperial Guard Contigent and about 6,000 points of Saim Hainn Eldar. I Also have a huge Orcs and Goblins Army I need to sell with alot of old models and fun Night Goblin Conversions I did back in the day. Plus Gorka Morka, Necromunda, Space Hulk, Blood Bowl, and a little Warhammer Quest. I love the GW fiction and am so used to the GW systems that I don't really want to play anything else.


....... Or at least that's what the chip makes me say.

Building a Better City From the Ground Up - Part 1

In my personal brief introduction I talked about aesthetics. The spectacle of the game is one of the most important things to me. As such, city fighting has fantastic opportunities for stunning visuals. One of the principle visual hang ups I have with most city boards is that they don't take into account city blocks and roads. Instead, the board is a haphazard collection of buildings randomly spaced about creating a maze of totally irregular fire lanes. These boards are very suitable for game play but they just don't convey the same feel I get from walking the streets of Chicago.

When I am out and about I think about terrain a lot. I look at the architecture around me and I pick out details that can be translated into the game board. After much analysis I decided that my randomly sized city buildings, however nice, were no longer suitable as they were. I needed to create city blocks. The solution I came up with was movement trays for my buildings. Though I'm actually a lot further along in the process of making these city blocks, I have only really spent the last couple of days detailing out the city block movement trays themselves so I took some step by step photos.

The above picture shows a piece of 1/8" masonite or hardboard cut to 24"x12". My city blocks currently are in 24"x12" and 12"x12" sections to start. To frame in the movement try I have applied strips of 1" wide foam core. You will also notice the 1"x1" gap in this photo. That space was left so that I can later create 1"x1" bases for sign posts, street lamps, statues, and the like.

The next picture is a close up of the sidewalk tiling. I cut 1"x1" squares out of card stock and glued them down. Sidewalks are rarely perfect so every so often I cut the 1" square into 2-3 pieces and glued them down to create cracks in the sidewalk.
This corner is heavily damaged. I actually am running low on foam core so I used some scraps that were not perfect. In beat up older neighborhoods like mine, cement this busted up happens occasionally. In the grim darkness of the 41st millennium where there is only war, I'm sure its the norm. You might notice I threw in some sprue offcuts under the sand.
Another broken section of sidewalk - again with sprue offcuts. Notice how I didn't let the sand extend onto the bare masonite in the center as that would prevent the buildings from sitting flat.

Its the little details that bring a piece of scenery to life. This random piece of plastic I beam that was laying on the table was promptly glued down onto the sidewalk when I saw it sitting there. After it sat for a moment I went back, added a bit more watered down white glue and sprinkled some sand around it.

In one of my terrain boxes I have an old Soy Yogurt cut labeled "dome things". This random plastic "dome" was glued down to represent some sort of waste water access. Again, just a sparse sprinkle of sand was added around it.

Here is a photo of the movement try with it filled with buildings. The fit was a little snug so the two large Chicago style "3 flats" a leaning out. I need to trim the ruined building at the end like 1/16" to take that pressure off. You will notice a couple of rings. Those are man holes. I have another Soy Yogurt cup labeled "ring things" and these metal rings were glued down and then card stock circles were glued into the center of each as covers. Here's the same block shot from the left. The large ruin was a building made before I standardized the bases for the movement trays so I literally glued the hardboard base onto a properly sized pink foam base and added sidewalk tiling to make it seem like the it was actually deliberate.

I don't want to get into the manufacture of the specific buildings in this first part of the article but I wanted to show how each of the building sections is on a semi-standardized base that is then dropped onto the movement tray, allowing for different looking city blocks to be set up each time.In my Chicago neighborhood there are vacant lots interspersed between buildings on most blocks. Some of them are makeshift parks or community gardens and others are just overgrown detritus collectors. Sometimes they are fenced in, sometimes there are walls, and other times they are wide open. This represents what was likely once one of the nicer vacant lots on the block - probably a community garden or tiny park.When placed together you can see how the movement tray creates a more genuine looking city block.

Part 2 will focus on the buildings themselves. I will be using pictures taken on my phone from around the neighborhood and talking about how to keep your buildings varied as well as how to get the most out of your Cities of Death building sets.

Thanks for reading. xNickBaranx

In the grim darkness of the future there is only war...

...but happily, we're not quite into that grim darkness yet. Scott's wife Clare gave birth to a new baby girl Estelle onto Saturday morning. Everyone is healthy and they're back at home now. Congratulations to them!

Now back to your regularly scheduled dystopian future.

Thoughts and Lessons from this Monday's game...

Yesterday, I posted my army list for the first game I played with the new Imperial Guard codex. Nick and I ended up playing a straight forward Annihilation mission, with the Spearhead (table quarters) deployment. Given the number of proxies and unpainted models on the table, we didn't take many pictures. And I was too busy trying to remember all the changes in the new codex to take notes on the game. It went the full seven turns, and was a great, and close, game. At the end of turn 5, we were in a draw. At the end of turn 6, Nick was up by 1 kill point. After turn 7, thanks to Sergeant Domitus and Veteran Squad 5, I was up by two kill points. My apologies for the lack of a thorough battle report, but I did want to talk about some things I learned and changes I plan to make to my army.

• I am very happy with the veteran squads, and the fact that they're troops is even better. Mounted up in Chimeras and coming on from reserve, they were in perfect position to capture objectives, if it had been an objective based mission. As it was, they were instrumental in killing several squads, and accounted for 4 of my 12 total kill points on their own, mostly due to their flamers, shotguns, and the ability to mount back up in the Chimera and go after a new target.
• I'm going to have to adapt how I use my command squads. In the past, my senior officer sat back with a lascannon and master vox, while my junior officer took his special weapon toting troopers and went after vehicles or went on suicide missions while his platoon sat back and shot. Given the new order system, I need to make my Company Commander more mobile, and my Platoon Commanders need to stick closer to their platoons. I'm happy with the weapons I gave to my platoon command squad-- now it's just a matter of adjusting how I use them. The company commander, however, will be changed. I'm planning on dropping the lascannon, and giving the Company Command Squad a Chimera. Not only will that make them more mobile and (hopefully) keep them alive a bit longer, it will give a couple more inches to the range of the orders. Which would have been helpfull last night.
• On a similar note, I need to remember to use the orders. On turn 3, I forgot to issue orders. I don't think it would have made a big difference, but who knows. Later on, Nick's Ork Kommandos outflanked and slaughtered my command squad before I could issue any further orders.  Hence the need for a Chimera mentioned above.
• Once or twice I missed the 24" range of the plasma guns I used under the old codex, but for the most part, I'm quite happy with switch to melta guns. Especially since they don't kill you when you miss. I still might kit out my platoon command squad with the 3 plasma guns and a medic combo. Have to think about that one...
• The Leman Russ "Lumbering Behemoth" rule isn't a game breaker, but it was nice. On a couple occasions, a heavy bolter firing after the battle cannon pushed a squad into a leadership test, or finished them off.
• Now that Hellhounds are fast, they're that much more effective and I might have to find the points to run two of them. However, now you have to be careful not to leave them out there unsupported if they get too far ahead. And for those who are switching to the Banewolf, all I can say is this: Purify the heretic and the xenos not with poison but with flame. Now you all know why I've finished in the middle of the pack at every tournament I've gone to.
• This isn't so much a new codex specific thought, but more a reminder: Don't count on orders, special characters, or anything else except the basic units you bring to the table and what they're capable of without extra help. The orders may make an infantry squad more effective, but they're not going to drastically change the squad, or the game. Don't expect them to. The same goes for the regimental advisors. The Astropath is great, especially for making sure your reserves arrive early, but don't count on getting the board edge you want. Likewise, the Officer of the Fleet is nice, and I'll be using him again, but don't count on him holding up your opponents reserves for long. Plan your moves as if all your orders will fail, and your opponents reserves will all show up on turn 2, and you won't be caught off guard when things don't go according to plan.

As I play more games with the new codex, I'll post more of my thoughts. In the meantime, I'll be scouring the internet for other Guard players' take on the new codex, and looking for all the meltaguns I suddenly need in this army.