Blog Wars Three Round Up

WARNING... this is going be a long, and texty post.

So, Me, Pete, Dan and Ian went to Blog wars 3 today. Awesome tourney, I think I actually preferred it to throne of skulls. The guys at Malestrom were excellent, and Alex Brown who runs From the Fang was a great host/organiser. Kudos to him. Check out his blog, for everything, ever. http://fromthefang.blogspot.co.uk/

The Games, in Summary. So, of the four of us, I placed last. Good stuff. I finished 20th out of 26th, with loss, draw and draw for 28 points. Pete got Loss, Win, Loss for 30 points (I think) Dan came 5th with Loss, Win, Win and the Mr Ian King placed 6th with Win, Loss, and Win, only three Game points behind Ian. Pete faced big bugs twice and got a bit frustrated, Dan got run over by the defending champion on the way to his victory, and Ian continues to punch very hard, and very fast at tourneys.

My Day.

First Game, I faced James from Sheep of war. An excellent opponent, he had a Jokaero themed list, with purifiers. Despite the fact that it was completely monkeys, he had a pretty hardcore list with three psyfldreads, Coteaz and lots of rending Lasscannons. I ended up going down 9 – 11 bottom of turn 7. I was winning bottom of turn 5, and drawing bottom of 6 I think. Highlight for me was charging Luke Skywalker into Coteaz, chopping his head off with a lightsaber and eating a Deamonhammer. Only to get back up in my go.

So I strolled back to where I belonged, in the bottom half. Game 2 saw me face a really cool guy (who I am really sorry but can’t remember his name! It may have been James I think) they were very pretty Tyranids. Lots of BIG bugs, including two Trygons, Swarmlord, Two Tervigons and 4 Hivegaurd. Highlight would have been blowing away two Trygons with the right amount of shooting. Yes, it was a lot of plasma and Lasscannon, but it was nice that it works! I should have lost this game. I know this feeling so well from the other side, you are all over your opponent, then they just realise that actually they can still get something out of the game. About my turn 4 (of 7) I realised that a draw was the best I could probly get. Whilst I was winning on 1 table quarter bottom of turn 5 (love love love going second with this list!) it ended in a draw, and after a couple of crucial roles I was able to get a draw. Which was very hard earned, and in some respects felt like a win. Total respect for the guy I played, he was brilliant with everything and I couldn’t fault him.

My Third game saw me jazz dance one table down despite my draw to 10 of 13. This time I faced a chap who I believe may have been called Scott, friends with Alex. His painting was simply beastly, total respect to him for that. He had three Predators, Mephiston (my auto loose choice) and land raider (can’t hurt those) and some other mech MSU stuff. He was I think, expecting me to outflank, but I don’t think he was expecting me to spend literally every turn chasing his predators around his back field. What units did I use for this you ask?

On their last outing for a while, I used Penal Legion. 240 points of Wesley Crusher, Starbuck and Daniel Jackson kept 540 points of Blood Angels Tanks occupied for 6 turns. Two squads with fleet, furious charge and counter attack plus Wesley rending for fun killed one and stopped the other two shooting for at 70% of the game. Brilliant. I have to say, he is the nicest opponent I have played probably all year. As for the result, it ended in a draw, but I think that is slightly because every single one of my units punched well above their weight. That is the stuff that dreams are made of.

So I ended with 28 points, in 20th place. Not too shabby. I wasn’t last, I didn’t win but I had loads of fun and really enjoyed a day out with guys. Congrats to the defending champ, the steamroller with nothing but a kill setting... Atreides from SoS! Are we going next time? If Alex will have us, hell yes.

Blog Wars 3 Build Up

So, time for a round up of my army when it comes to the hottest tournament this side of Adepticon (at least geographically.)http://fromthefang.blogspot.co.uk/ is the site, and Alex is actually appealing for an extra participant as we speak! get in there!

My Army is Imperial Guard, based largely around the rebel alliance. There are xwings, Luke Skywalker, and my newly converted Chimera. Whilst I don’t intend to give away the secrets (the army is so fluffy if you blow on it, it will fall over so I need all the help I can get!) suffice to say that my main tactic is to run at the enemy and hope for the best. Try and destroy the metal boxes, and then charge. (With guardsmen? – wow) I'm simply trying to save the galaxy from the empire, one glorious death at a time.

My special character will be Yarrick, as both he and Luke Skywalker lost a hand at one point, they both have that insane wish not to die, and are both balls cool as hell. (not sure that last bit counts as a sentence). In all honesty, this army does not work at 1750, unless I bought 3 hydras. but they are more money than I have. so I haven’t bought them. Its much better at 1500. I spent the extra 250 points on a command squad, I mean come on!

Pictures! Each one of these counts as 1000 words....

Highlighting White.

How exactly do you highlight white? Let’s break that down a little. White is the existence of all colours on the colour spectrum. It is I suppose not a “colour” more an orgy of colours and light. Or something. Anyways, how do you “highlight” that? Surely making brighter something that is... brightness is a bit of a waste of time?

Yes. That's my opinion on the subject. But wait! Today’s post is on that. So how did I resolve this issue? Well, having talked to Jo (whilst on a bus) he said to use a 50/50 mix of skull white and space wolves grey. My concern was that I am trying to repaint the storm troopers ready for blog wars 3 as I really speed painted them beforehand. Their armour is completely white, and pretty blocky at that. That's basically how I've always painted white, to differing results. These guys did not look good.

What I eventually arrived at doing was washing them with badab black over the white and this evening I have worked up from that with a coat of space wolves grey/ skull white and then a coat of thinish skull white for highlighting. Dont get me wrong, I don’t think I will win a painting comp with them, but they look a darn sight better and I'm really happy. I've got some fairly grainy pics below:

These are basically of the sergeants from both squads. One of which has been done, (1st pic) and the other hasn’t (2nd pic). The wash and following layers, though you can’t see it from the pictures that clearly have really added that definition that I was craving and I'm really pleased with the outcome for amount of effort I've put in. It only took me about 90 mins for the first 8, which for me is fast!

Blog War 3

Blog Wars 3 So. The Dream Team that is Me, Pete, Dan and Ian (I like to think of us as Luke Fogg and The Shadows) are booked into Blog Wars 3. I'm quite excited, because I wanted to go last year, but was really not quick enough to the drop. So here we all are. My List is going to be Project Far Far Away, (partly because I cant be bothered to rush out 1500 points of howling griffons in two months) and partly because they look awesome. I've already started on improving the paint jobs, because I really rushed the storm troopers in the closing stages.

Here’s the Original List:

Yarrick

4 Squads of Penal Legion

2 Squads of Vets

2 Vendettas

1 Valkyrie

2 Squads of Storm Troopers

1 Leman Russ

I'm thinking about dropping the Leman Russ. My concerns stem from it does not fit in with the character of the rest of the army, and also it doesn’t look like it’s from star wars at all. Id probly replace it with a command squad with Astropath and lots of plasma in a chimera, and another Chimera for the second squad of Storm Troopers. This means I get the drop earlier (turn two with everything) as opposed to relying on luck to score what I want, where I want.

My issue with that is that I may start using my one nemesis. Tactics. This one word cripples me when it comes to wargames. Playing with what is pretty much a full outflank army nerfs that completely, as I just place them where the dice tells me works both with and against me. Regardless, I'm not going to get any games in this week as I have to work a late shift in Christian bookshop land. Just theoretical. Not yet practical.