Vlog 5: Blog wars X tournament report

So! Here is my vlog of our experiences at the north west gaming centre on Saturday. 10 of use went from Leicester sabres to Blog Wars X, a tournament run by Alex at From the Fang. 

He's just put the standings up, and I came 11th. Annoyingly, just outside the top 10, but I had a really great three great games, and came 2nd in one of the painting competitions. So a pretty good day! It was the last blog wars, meaning that of the 18 games I played at blog wars, I only lost the first one at blog wars 3. Since then, I've not lost! Winning 14 and drawing 3. Click today's video to find out how I did this time :)

Ill follow up with a couple of unit reviews this week - for now enjoy the video!

X-wing repaints series - episode 1

One of the things in my long absence from writing on this blog I took up was the X-wing miniatures game. I've mentioned before why I like it so much, and one the major bonuses for many people (myself included) is that the ships are painted. 

However, as part of my heart is as a hobbyist I wanted to try my hand at repaints. In this series I will showcase my repaints of various models. I view this as a long term thing - I'd like to repaint all of my models but so far I'm at about 50%. Part of the reason for repainting them is that I want them to look a little bit like spaceships that get used! I feel like the paint jobs that occur "out of the box" have a way to parade ground feel. 

The first ship I wanted to show you is a b-wing. With a lot of my Rebel ships, I have chosen to paint them with red markings. I like the way that themes then together. Obviously the inspiration is red/rogue squadron, but I know that doesn't fit within the canon. 

I've painted this b-wing broadly following the pre-painted markings, just making sure that I emphasise the pipes/wiring that runs across the wings. The trickest bit was not painting over the  pipes on the wings when painting the red, and vice versa. Although when I say tricky, I don't mean shooting a whomp rat tricky. I have another two of these on the go st the moment, but the my aren't finished yet.

The other offering for the episode if one of my A-wings. The white stipe is to differentiate between ships, and also helps denote the elite pilot, should one be a higher PS than the other.  I'm really pleased with the engines on these guys. They glow a little bit, just like I want them too.

I have most of the rebel ships, and whilst A-wings aren't super competitive they are the most fun ship to fly. They've got a lot of good manevuers available, and the auto thrusters card has really given them another lease of life.

The one thing I'd love advice on is what to strip the paint off with? These guys are painted straight over, and they do begin to loose a bit of their detail. Any suggestions?

Blog Wars X Unit Reviews - Darksun Life Vol 4

So, in a change to the advertised vlog (I will get to the x-wing one I promise, I’m just having more difficulties putting it together than I thought I would!) I’ve decided to vlog some of the units from my army that I’m taking to Blog Wars X!

It’s difficult to fit all of my 1850 point army into a short Vlog, but in summary it hasn’t change very much since last time. So still drop pods and Sternguard. The one change is that I’ve swapped Coteaz out for some imperial guard. Gives me a few more men, allows me to bulk up my line a bit.

My personal highlight from our practice games this weekend was Telion facing off against Ezekiel and half a tactical squad. He died eventually in combat, but because he died in my turn (after sniping Ezekiel the previous turn, resisting having his mind turned to jelly and then club a Tac marine to death in combat) Toph didn’t get the maelstrom points for that card.

Press play to enjoy! Feel free to comment below as well - is there anything you’d like to see me vlog in the future?

Star Wars X-wing miniatures game

(Me coming third at a recent event - although in Loughborough I'm still 5 wins 8 losses for X-wing!)

So long term readers of this blog will remember project far far away (where I converted and made a full Star Wars imperial guard army, including X-wing vendettas! Check out the far far away tag for more on that.) so it may only come as a surprise to me that I now play the X-wing miniatures game. 

As a kid I have to confess it was Star Trek, Stargate and then Star Wars in that order. But as I've grown up Star Wars has become much more prominent in my mindset. I still love the other two, but it's funny because I think Star Wars is probably the most socially acceptable. 

My #1 favourite thing about the game is how tight the ruleset is. They are constant evolving it, but the original ships in the original boxed set are still viable options. There is not a lot of room for misinterpretation or rules abuse, and when there is something I've noticed that FFG fix it reasonably quickly. 

My #2 thing is that it's so easy to learn and play. For a 40k player, it's almost like just playing settlers or something like that. There is a lot less to keep track of than munchkin for example. You're literally picking the template that corresponds to the thing you pick on your dial. No moving. That extra inch, or debating what's gone line of sight. 

The #3 thing that a lot of people mention is the fact that the ships are pre-painted! For me, I'd agree but u actually really enjoy painting them :) check out the blog later this week (probly the weekend) for a vlog showing some of them off!

There are a bunch  of other things, but to be honest the main one for me is the players. Even at the most competitive levels I've experienced, where prizes dished out by the manufacturer are stake (unlike 40k I hasten to add) there is never anything like the bad manners that I've experienced in 40k. It's so much nicer. Even thou it's a high standard of play, it's a high standard of sportsmanship as well. How refreshing. 

I'm taking my new, force awakens core set to blog wars to intro somebody, but should have a 100 point fleet with me as well. If you're around the night before and up for it, then let me know. Happy to run a larger intro game, or even get in a game :)

The blog returns! With Space Marine Bikes

So, a long time no blog. In the time that I haven't blogged, the following has happened:

 - I've got married

- I got 2 new jobs (I now work for the Church of England)

- I've moved house 3 times and we have really noisy neighbours in the current place

- there have been two space marine codexes

- 7th edition happened

- I help out at my church youth group

- I now play X-wing 

- I now play bolt action

- I've been to various tournaments: Several blog wars, student nationals, X-wing tournaments, X-wing championships 

- I came third at a couple of tournaments (student nationals and an X-wing tournament)

- I came 4th at blog wars 8

Space marine bikes!

So tonight's blog is about bikes I'm painting for blog wars. Above there is pic, but below there is a video! I'm getting back into this blog partly because I want to try Vlogging. It's a good place to host the blogs & vlogs I'm hoping it will be successful. So here is the first attempt:

https://youtu.be/5jHTwGc1v54

I read quite a lol if blogs and need to give a lot of credit to Michael  (http://standwargaming.blogspot.co.uk/?m=1), Dave (http://40kaddict.blogspot.co.uk/?m=1) and Alex (http://fromthefang.blogspot.co.uk/?m=1) for giving me good blogs to read! I'm hoping to contribute to the blogosphere now as well!

Giving in to the thoughts in my head.

So recently I've been thinking about what has is good value for points that I know of. Saint Celestine is one good example of this. I therefore propose to take her. Here is a list I have spent this evening thinking about (although its been in my head for weeks)

Nuns With Guns

Saint Celestine 115 points

Battle Sister Squad x10, 1 Meltagun 135 points

Battle Sister Squadx10, 1 Meltagun 135 points

Company Command Squad, Kell, Autocannon, Plasma Gun, 160 points

Platoon Command Squad, Autocannon, Plasma Gun, 55 Points

Squad A Lascannon, Plasma Gun, 85 Points

Squad B Lascannon, Plasma Gun, 85 Points

Squad C Lascannon, Plasma Gun, 85 Points

Squad D Autocannon, Plasma Gun, 75 Points

Mortar Team 60 Points

Autocannon Team 75 Points (freaking cheap!)

Lascannon Team 105 Points

Storm Troopers x8, Double Plasma Guns, Plasma Pistol, 168

Manticore 160

So this is the list I will be maybe trying out to see how saint Celestine works. Thou its a lot of proxy, and I feel bad. I may just stick to my normal list until I have least bought all the guard bits! But I think it has a lot of potential. You basically shove Celestine down their flank/throat, and then if they don’t shoot her she gets to hit something. If they do, then the rest of your army (including a shiny new manticore! – may have to get me one of these) blow the living hell out of them.

Not even a little subtle, and it may not work long run, but I have 2 meltaguns, 9 plasma weapons, 6 Lasscannons, 6 Autocannons, and 89 models 80 of which score. Even Dan might not table that (although I'm not certain).

Cutting open a Grey Knight

So. After an eventful day at work on Wednesday that included sexual harassment training, I rolled over to Games Workshop to play jo and his 6 model army.

For those not aware, this army has two Paladins, Draigo and two Dreadknights that both have teleport homers. Oh and a Fortress of Redemption. Yeah. My army on the other hand had over 100 gaurdsmen with a lot of plasma and melta, 3 mortars (yeah!) and 6 lascannons backed up by 6 autocannons. A 700point troops choice. Also I had ratlings, penal legion and a couple of squads of storm troopers to help max out on the heavy weapons.

We play the Relic, with standard deployment. Jo won and put his fortress down next to... the fortress of redemption that was on the board. Hmmm. The paladins and draigo manned his fortress, whilst the two flying Dreadknights stood on the battlements of the other one ready to wiz onto the objective in his first turn. I blanketed my deployment zone (literally) with all sorts of stuff, infiltrated the ratlings and outflanked a squad of storm troopers who had meltaguns. (and completely forgot about the penal legion until like, turn 4?)

I didn’t seize, and jo teleported in, took the relic with one and stood in front of the first one with the second one. He shot me up good, but didn’t take down any complete unit, meaning that he didn’t get first blood. Admittedly this could be because its hard to tell where units end and begin, but the ones he shot up either held or rallied. And crucially, he didn’t run with the relic holding dreadknight because he thought it was 6inch per turn, where as it is actually 6 inch per phase.

I then killed the dreadknight that was holding the relic. Sounds easy I know, but I did basically shoot my whole army (which is just a gun line) at this one guy. So he should have died lol. (first blood!)Next turn, he picked up the relic with the other dreadknight, and shot me some more, and ran with it to take it back towards his double fortress. I then shot off this dreadknight. Two in two turns. Highlight of the match occurred for me at this point, as I killed it with ratlings (took its final wound off).

The rest of the game revolved around a mad rush for me towards the objective,(including with the mortar team, who did die on the way) and jo’s three men and double fortresses trying to shoot me off. Turns out buildings are spectacularly hard to kill, especially multipart ones. I didn’t kill either, but did manage to get both paladins. Leaving draigo alive in a silo and actually in combat with him... err I won with linebreaker, first blood and holding onto the relic. Jo got kill the warlord.

I could tell that this army isn’t that fun to play against, partly because its hard to tell what has shot. I think I am going to have to come up with an easy to understand way of representing whos’ shot (possibly turning them the wrong way round). All in all, doubling the amount of heavy weaponary I have (and not playing dan) improved the result drastically. Plus, scattering the lascannons and autcannons into squads as well as having heavy weapons platoons of each meant they couldn’t all be so quickly picked off, because I will admit, having 3 lascannons hanging out together is pretty much always the first target.