Bolt action league results

So last night I won my bolt action league! Here is the proof: 

I went 7 wins with 1 draw and 2 losses over the last couple of months. Very pleased with the overall result obviously, but also since I've not really played bolt action prior to this term, exstatic to have a the juggernaughts trophy for a short while. 

You can watch my latest vlog about bolt action here:  

Battle Report Game 2 - Darksun Life 22

"Drop me near them, I want to hit them with my Grav Cannons!"

Yeah. The heading pretty much says it all. In a continuing theme for these Battle Reports, my Grav Cents spent most of the game in combat with Grots who repeatedly refused to break and run away. I mean, I can't be bitter because we did pretty well all things considered. But those were some mighty, mighty grots.

X-wing mini tourney pre Double Trouble

By now, some of you may have read the from the gang blog post that talks about me running an X-wing hunger games event the night before double trouble. It'll be free to enter, and everything you need will be provided. I may have to cap the numbers but we'll see! Hopefully it will cater as an intro event but also a nice way to experience new forms of playing X-wing, beyond the competitive scene. There may be a prize for the winner, thou it depends on numbers how that will iron out!

 

Without giving the game away too much, a Hunger Games style event copies some of the battle royal feel of the films and books. You, in your single spaceship will go toe to toe with others in similar small plastic spaceships. In the centre of the battlefield there will be a cornucopia where you can grab upgrades to attach to your X-wing, tie fighter or y-wing. These updates will be random and may be something you couldn't normally put on your ship type. For example, a mangler cannon on an x wing or some torpedoes on a tie fighter.  Ships will be deployed around the edge of the board, facing inwards. The winner will be the last man/woman standing. 

 

I'm hoping that the event will allow those who haven't played before to learn the ropes and also test themselves in a swirling cross fire of events. I think the unfocused nature of it will help people get a taste for the game. They can just take things slowly whilst others destroy each other, but they can also dive straight into the thick of the action. For the experienced player it offers a chance to prove their mettle in a new form of space combat. No practised formation flying here!

So, if you're around the night before and would like to get involved, let me know! I know that some of us from Leicester will be there, along with some of the usual suspects (Mike, Dave, henni?). Comment on this post or email me at: lightningmuppet(at)hotmail.com

EDIT- provisionally putting the start time down as 7.30, but this does depend on when people are available! 

How to: Magnetize X-wing bases

Dear readers! This is what I've been working on for the last few days. A suprise project that makes my ships look great! Magnetised flying bases. This one in particular is for large base ships. I'm still working on the small base ships, that'll follow in the future. I can't take any credit for the idea, I pretty much got step by step instructions from a good friend (George), even to the point of checking I was buying the right things on Amazon! Here is a suitably dynamic pose of the two jumpmasters I've done so far!

 

Whilst I've been doing a lot of Vlogging recently, I wanted to go a bit old fashioned with this and write a blog instead! Plus, it was so quick I didn't have time to think about recording it! So I've got a few steps written down here for you to follow. 

To complete this hobby adventure you will need the following:

• 10mm steel ball bearings (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00TIG8JNW/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_Z2Sqxb7WMGBK2 ) 
• 10mm countersunk rare earth magnets. (They basically have a dip in them to allow the ball bearing to rest on them snugly).(https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007UOXRY0/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_y4Sqxb6E8TH7A )
• 10mm metal tube. I picked up some aluminium admonished tube from wickes. (Top tip, straight copper tube doesn't seem to available in that size)
• Some way of cutting said metal tube
• Green stuff (other cheaper vareities are available)
• Hobby clippers 
• Some files
• Decent super glue
• Black spray paint
• A loving and understanding spouse who will be impressed that you have magnetised it correctly

Step 1 - the prep work

Select the length of tube you want, and cut to size. I wouldn't go above 6 inches if I were you (but that's for another time). File off the ends to make sure they are smooth. Then using your hobby clippers cut away the two smaller squarish bits on the large ship base. If you're unsure which bits I mean, look at the shape of the peg hole relative to the bits I've cut off. In the end, I didn't take the peg triangle out btw. 

 

Once you're happy that both these bits are smooth, get some green stuff and fill the holes in the flying base. 

Step 2: the flying stand

In addition to filling in the holes with green stuff,  I added enough that when I put the tube in the green stuff supports it on either side. So about level with the remaining raised circular bits. 

 

Using the tube, gently create a groove for it to sit into the green stuff. Then remove the tube, add a decent amount of superglue and re-apply the tube. This step is really important, make sure that the tube is at the correct angle (dead straight). Once you've done this leave it to one side an let it dry. 

 

Step 3: the ship

Get whichever large base ship you are using and  either remove the peg insert by pulling it out, or clipping it off. Either way, in the same spot where you just removed the peg, make sure you've got a nice flat surface corresponding to the approximate size of the countersunk magnet. It's important that it's in the same spot as the old peg insert because that's where the ship is designed to balance from. (Note: I think the ghost may be different due to its size, you may need to mess around with where you put the magnet).

When you're happy with the place where you are going to put the magnet, superglue it in place. You may need a tiny bit of greenstuff to give it a good surface to bond onto, but use that sparingly. 

Step 4: spray paint and ball bearings

Whilst the superglue for the magnet is drying, take a can of black spray paint and spray the base that you've made. Once the spray paint is dry, spray some varnish ontop of it to make sure that the paint doesn't chip off. 

 

When this is dry, get your ball bearings and superglue them to the top of the tube. With that, you're done! The really handy thing is hat you'll only need to make a handful of bases for standard play. More will be required for epic play or flying swarms of ships of course. I'll leave you with a couple of shots of the jumpmasters flying at fancy angles!

 

 

Deathwatch Killteam review

Last week at club I played Deathwatch: Killteam. Read on to find out how I got on.....

Ian had brought Killteam with him, and I'll be honest the models are beautiful. As much as it pains me to say it, games workshop are doing an excellent job with the quality of thier miniatures, and the ruleset isn't that bad either. The game plays basically like how Soace Marines are in any of the books you read. Ian described them as being are superhuman "movie marines". 

The way that this is borne out in the basic game is that the marines go first, and shoot twice. So each turn looks roughly like this:

• Space marines move
• Genestealers move 
• Space marines shoot
• Genestealers shoot
• Space marines shoot again

This means that as a marine player you can wade through hordes of cultists and stealers as you achieve your objectives. Having only played the one game, I'm not going to go deep into the rules, but they are very simple. They've removed "to wound" rolls entirely, if you hit, that's a wounding hit. 

The game plays very fast, with the phases cycling through very quickly each turn. What's interesting for the tyranid player is that you get cards to lurk with every turn, similar to space hulk. You draw from a deck every turn and place those cards facedown, not revealing them until after the space marines have moved. It's tough to bring down a marine, and I found that they were taking out smaller groups of 6-7 cultists with ease. The cool thing is you can leave one card lurking for another round, especially as you can only place what models the game comes with. 

This creates a balancing element, as you can never have to many purestrain genestealers running around. It's nicely balanced though, as the marines are so tough you might cycle through the same models every round. 

The thing that I realised very early on was that I needed to swarm the marines to stand any chance of killing one. You need at least 5 or 6 to 1 to stand a chance of taking one down. And that's after thier attacks! So you probably need 8/9-1!  It feels very cinematic, games workshop have got that bit spot on. There is desperation on both sides and it really turns into a swirling blood bath!

Springing the trap is all important. The cards that give you cultists also give you abilities such as "attack twice" and combining these factors is the only way to take down a space marine. Even with that ability and all of these guys I was only able to take down 1 marine. They're tough!

Overall, I'd reccomend playing this game if you get the chance. It's fun, fast and cinematic. I don't know that I'd buy it, as £118/$160 is quite a lot, and I don't play tyranids. But if you have always planned to do a cultist army, then the models are amazing, and if you've got a group together you could play through the missions quite nicely. If you can, give it a go!

Visiting The Dice Cup Nottingham

Recently my wife and I went to Nottingham for a day out (Yes she is real!) We went round the caves under the shopping centre and then had a few hours to kill before our movie. I suggested we try The Dice Cup Cafe, a board game cafe that id heard about on Facebook. Gav Thorpe is always raving about it and I confess I looked on with no small amount of jealousy. 

I often forget how lucky I am to live so close to the spiritual home of games workshop and warhammer world. Living within an hours drive when many live more than a plane flight away is something I take for granted! Nottingham has a rich heritage in gaming terms, for example warlord games seem to have a big presence there (the caves tour was selling a Robin Hood model of theirs, and I've seen bolt action on sale at the castle). Because of this I was hopeful that the place would be of good quality, and I was not disappointed. 

The basic premise of the place is that you can pay to play games for as long as you like. It's £5 pp, and in busy times they limit you to four hours. So £1.25 pp/ph. I imagine that's more of a weekend thing though. For this cover charge you get free use of as many board games as you can manage to play in that time! 

 

We picked out the following selection, and over the course of about 2.5 hours worked our way thru. Although we couldn't play the friends game because it's minimum 4 people! There is a real mix of games, 

(helpfully provided here!) and they are helpfully organised into catagories, such as light strategy or party games right up to carcassone or transformers risk. The real benefit for us is that it allowed us to play games we've not got, almost to test them out. If we didn't enjoy it, no loss! 

Of the games we played, "zombies" was a hit. This is a shot of Tabz combining a couple of cards (I don't move, she moves 10 spaces) to fly past me and escape on the helicopter. Totally though I had it! In my opinion, the mark of a good game for us is that it holds both our interests, and that we both have fun. Zombies did that, and is potentially something that we might look at getting at some point. 

As I mentioned, the massive benefit was testing games out, and we played sushi go to see what all the fuss was about. Following that, we actually bought it as well! So proof that thier business model works! I'm actually really pumped about it as wel, it's a lot of fun!  I will review it at some point in the near future In detail. We also played best treehouse ever, which is slightly more complicated version of sushi go, using some similar mechanics to build a better treehouse than your oppenants!

So, that's a broad narrative account of what we did, how did I rate the dice cup overall?

1. It's clean, well ventilated and full of natural light. Only a couple of nerd places I know are like that!
2. Friendly staff, helpful and the right amount of welcoming. I've been to nerd places where the shopkeeper shouts across the store to prospective customers, so it was really good to be welcomed properly. 
3. Decent clean toilets. Again, for some reason not always a given. But the ones in this place were good. 
4. Vast selection of boards games. Obvious for a cafe of this nature I'm sure, but there was a lot of choice. And lots of possible styles as well, from cash and guns to games that are gonna take all afternoon. 
5. My wife liked it. At least enough to stay for afternoon! She's not a nerd, but enjoys board games. There are places I've gamed that I wouldn't take her into, but this place was a safe bet. 
6. Nice cafe. A really good combination of the two, with a proper barista machine to make coffee and the possibility of other things such as milkshakes (if they have ice cream in!)
7. Fully wheelchair accessible, not a step in the place that I could see! Ramps galore!
8. No music. It was mid afternoon, and things did liven up by the time we left but there wasn't any background music. I didn't ask about it so it may just have been broken, but i think that would have added to the atmosphere. That was something Tabz brought up actually. 

Probably the thing that deserves most discussion is the cover charge for playing. I don't think it's that unusual to charge for use of tables, although I'm blessed with a local flgs that doesn't charge, and the membership fee for my club is £10 p/a. In that regard, I paid as much for my whole year as I did for one afternoon. However this is an unfair comparison as I go to uni society gaming club (even thou I never went to that uni and I'm nearly 30!) and this was a functioning high street business in the middle of the city. 

I think it's quite normal to charge per attendance at clubs, and I did see that they do discounted rates if you're a member that save you money over the year. When in off peak periods that charge could be for half the day (they open until 11) it's actually quite a reasonable charge I think. I can easily see that if I lived in Nottingham I'd be spending time there regularly. I think the key to getting the most out of it is to plan to spend at least 2-3 hours there. That way the cover charge doesn't seem like that much. If you're just popping in for an hour you won't get your monies worth. 

Overall, I'm very pro this place. It not kept me happy but also was somewhere my wife felt comfortable, something that's very important! I wish there were one in Leicester. If you're in Nottingham and want somewhere to spend a few hours then I'd reccomend popping in. 

Punishing 1 repaint part 1

Good Friday good morning! Or afternoon! Whatever :) I've decided that the next ship I'm gonna repaint is the jumpmaster 5000! I've seen a lot of cool repaints flying around on Facebook and forums and stuff, and I wanted to take my own spin on it. Even if I haven't learnt how to fly it yet!

(This is my dengar taking 7 out of 8 hit points off y-wing in one turn!)

I decided that the best thing to do was to try some concept sketches as to what I thought would work. So I broke into my wife's colouring pens and did a bit of drawing:

Here's the first offering. I'm really taken by the purple, and I've seen a lot of repaints where the crescent is repainted a spot colour (red, blue etc) with the rest of the hull a normal colour. I thought about adding some detail through a stripe or double stripe, and splashing some white in there as well. All the time desperately trying to avoid the cockpit looking phallic. 

I scribbled down some names as well, I was thinking about something to do with purple, or royalty. I think I've probably settled on the "Royal Court Cartel" if I use this a purple colour scheme. I think I would go for more shading along the crescent, and transition of from quite a light purple to a darker purple. 

My other attempt was inspired by reading copious amounts of wookiepedia. The Crimson Nova were one of the most powerful bounty hunter guilds, and specialised in collecting bounties on Jedi. I went through a few ideas here, trying to get the shockwave of a supernova expressed on the crescent of the ship. 

I took a bit of inspiration from this picture for the third design on this page. And I think that's the one I'm going to use! I'm gonna have a white-ish hull and then paint a shockwave onto it. So this jumpmaster will be flown by a crimson nova bounty hunter. For the second one (if I buy a second!) I might go with the royal Court Cartell, but equally I might do something with the colour green. I have a lot of shades of green paint, where as I don't really own any purple! Stay tuned for updates on the first one soon :)

X-wing wave 8 musings

With wave 8 imminent, I've been played around with what I think I want to try out when the new ships come out. I thought I'd pour out my thoughts onto a blog post! 

get ready wallet!

There's a couple of lists I'd like to think about, and this is the first: 

Ghosting around (98)

"Chopper" (47) - VCX-100

Enhanced Scopes (1), Extra Munitions (2), Sabine Wren (2), Bombardier (1), Ghost (0), Ion Projector (2), Ion Bombs (2)

Ezra Bridger (28) - Attack Shuttle

Push The Limit (3), Ion Cannon Turret (5), Phantom (0)

Bandit Squadron Pilot (12) - Z-95 Headhunter

Bandit Squadron Pilot (12) - Z-95 Headhunter

It's not perfect by any means, but it's working off the idea that the Ghost is a big old ship that's likely to get in the way! With a 4 straight move on a large base ship, you are guarenteed to be able to reach your oppenant quickly. And by reach I mean bump. Or get him to bump you! And that's where the fun begins. 

You've got enhanced scopes, which means if you choose, you can be PS0 in the activation phase. You then move first and jump right in where you think they'll be. If they hit you, they may get ion'ed. they will defo get a stress from choppers ability. Then you shoot something that isn't touching you, but may have got stacked up behind. Then you ion that because you can shoot the attack shuttles' turret! Hopefully if you're facing something in formation, you've really ruined thier day. Potentially, if you play your cards right you can block 3 ships, with maybe only 1 shooting you. 

At this point I have to give complete credit to a friend (Shane hibbard) who showed me who devastating the ion projectors really are. Shoving it into the middle of somebody's formation is horrible!

If not, and they can break away, then you've got ion bombs that can go and speed two away from you. Both the ion projectors and chopper trigger every turn. So you could keep a ship there for a few turns, piling up its stress. When you eventually pull away, you can choose to drop the ion bomb before you move (screwing them again) and then parachute Ezra out if you as well, staying behind them and picking off what's left. The ion bombs help with this because they keep things going slow that extra turn. 

The z95s are useful filler. I'd debated a bwing with a tractor beam, but it's a slower ship and one less ship.  I'll see thou. I do love b-wings!I'm looking forward to trying it out on the tabletop. Do you have X-wing? What are you looking forwards to about wave 8?

Achievement double unlocked: win another tournament

I may have won another X-wing store championships over the weekend.....

Here's a picture from my round one game (which I actually lost!). More information to follow, but I basically didn't loose again all day! 

Achievement unlocked: win a tournament

You may be able to geuss what this blog post is about due to the title. Whilst it's not a goal on my hobby resolutions, it's been an overarching goal for some time. Indeed, on the "mr & Mrs" video that my wife and I did for when we got married, it was one of my stated aims, instead of things like kids and the like. One thing at a time I say!

In summary, yesterday I went to an X-wing store championships at Titan games in Lichfield. I ran the 4 scum ywings with tlt and unhinged astromech. For this that don't know, that means each ship has a turret that fires twice a turn, as well as being making the ships much more manoeuvrable. 

I went undefeated in Swiss, (despite having 1 z95 take out 2.5  ywings on its own!) and then went all the way after the cut. In my semi final/ top 4 game I was very fortunate, and got the drop on my oppenant, who should have had me dead to rights. And then in the final, I played a Biggs/wes/keyan build that is beaten in round 4, and successfully managed to broadside them one at a time. 

Further in depth reports will follow as well as a vlog, but I couldn't contain my excitement and had to blog about it! 

Eisenhorn Gameplay Trailer

In all honesty, I didn't even know this was a thing! But apparently GW are allowing somebody to make an Eisenhorn PC game. I love the Eisenhorn books, I have some of the original paperbacks, signed by Dan Abnett himself, so I'm in the target market for this game!


Having now watched the trailer, my observations would be that its quite a dark trailer. And by that I don't mean grimdark, I mean hard to see. I don't know if its the setting of my work PC, but I was struggling to see what was going on. I'm sure you could adjust that though. It also looks quite a bit like the Space Marine game mixed with Assassins Creed. Stealth with button bashing.


Inspite of these two things, I'm cautiously optimistic about it. If my PC/ Xbox 360 will run it, I might consider it. Those books were one of the things that really got me into the 40k universe in a big way, and I did quite enjoy Space Marine and Firewarrior. Im not a massive Assassins creed fan, but I suppose you've got to use different tactics if you're an Inquisitor compared with being a Battle Brother of the Adeptus Astartes.....

2016 Hobby Resolutions

It's 2016! I wanted to set down some goals for my hobby. I've been really looking forwards to this post, because people keep asking me about what my resolutions for 2016 are and I don't have much to say that isn't related to war gaming. So hopefully this post will be good!

Bolt action 

I received some flak for my dismissive comments about bolt action. So I thought I'd better put it on the to do list for 2016! For my brits Id like to conservatively aim for the following:

1. Having painted the 20/30 models I have assembled (inc 1 tank)
2. Assemble the commandoes that I have (should take my army to around 50 men)
3. Become competent at the game. I've not played very much and I'd like to have a reasonable grasp at it! 

Not much to aim for, but at the moment I've only played 2 games and haven't painted a single model. Part of me is really tempted to paint them all wrong. Eg pink and purple, or with American squad markings. My hope would be is that it would be to much for the historical pedants. But I don't know if I could take them being to far off the beaten track!

40k

A lot has changed for 40k in the last 12 months. What can we expect in the next 12?! In all honestly it makes me a bit nervous. Games workshop's approach to 40k at the moment appears to be something of a blender that you put your debit card in. And can only pick out whilst the aforementioned kitchen applicance is on. Heaven forbid you ask to adjust the speed (ruleset) or to mix it yourself (trying to balance the game). 

With that badly mangled metaphor in mind, here is what I'd like to achieve in 2016 for my 40k:

1. Attend at least two 40k tournaments (should be easy with fluffagedon and double trouble). 
2. Sell my space wolves. An odd goal, but with the vague prospect of games workshop blowing up 40k in the same way that they did with fantasy, I don't need 4 full sized 40k armies. 
3. Paint some stuff (see below). 

X-wing 

Yes, X-wing. Pew pew pew. I've really fallen in love with X-wing over the last 12 months. It flirts with being my primary hobby system, which is something I never thought would happen. How nieve of me! Here are my X-wing goals for 2016:

1. Attend at least 3 weekend warlord events this year. 
2. Attend 1-2 store championships. How refreshing that the games developer supports structured tournament play!
3. Start an imperial fleet. Dangerous, (especially for my wallet!) I know. But I think I'd quite like an imperial fleet. I'm thinking triple ace or tie swarm. I'm sure I'll be terrible at flying it!
4. Run a version of the outryder cup between Leicester sabres, weekend warlords and somebody else. It's basically a team event where you pair against other stores/clubs. (More on this in another post)

Vlogging

It's going well! 10 so far. I'd like to get to 50 vlogs this year, and 200 blog posts. That's about 2 posts a week of some nature - I'll be signposting the vlogs on here so in terms of content it's not to daunting. Hopefully more painting, more tourney reports, and maybe branching out to the other areas of my life occasionally as well! 

Everything else

I've got a blood bowl tournament on my birthday weekend that I'm really looking forwards to. But to compete, I still have 9-10 men to paint. Better get a move on with that then! I don't know how good I'm gonna do, but being wood elves I'm aiming for 16 touchdowns over 8 games. And being wood elves, not end up with my whole team dead!

Painting

So, instead of listing the stuff in each of their areas I thought I'd do a list here:

1. Paint my whirlwind
2. Complete a second thunderfire cannon & techmarine
3. Paint more bikes for 40k, so that I have enough to field 10 bikes plus a captain/ librarian. 
4. Paint my bolt action stuff
5. Paint IG-88s for X-wing (a specific goal within number 9)
6. Paint my old models that I've found
7. Paint my blood bowl team. (Needed by the 16th of January!)
8. Paint commissar yarrick
9. Get up to date with the Horus heresy stories. (Possibly a laughable goal, we'll see!)
10. Have all my small and large base ships painted for X-wing by the end of the year

So, that's all in all a good collection of things to aim for!