As a father of 3 diaper-weilding children, my gaming budget is very small these days. Usually I can resist giving in to the new stuff that GW has to offer, though things like the bastions and new space marine squad options have tempted me sorely as of late.
I've gotten around my desire for Sternguard veterans by loading up on Deathwatch Kill Team conversions as a cheaper way of fielding WYSIWYG vets. $25 for a conversion kit for 10 marines seems to be the way to go if you've otherwise got a well stocked bit box and unassembled tactical marines laying around.
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?prodId=prod1110206&rootCatGameStyle=
But every once in a while, I make the mistake of looking at Forgeworld. Sure, the greater daemons and titans make me drool on my keyboard, but every so often they put out an irresistable model that's in my price range.
So thank you, Forgeworld. Thank you for ruining my budget once more.
Please keep up the good work. =P
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Ranillon has already covered the flow of the game itself. He mentioned having help from a teammate that flank marched into the enemy's rear? Those were my marines, and this is my take on the battle.
FLANK MARCH
On setup, I found our force setting up opposite a player who brought a MASSIVE imperial guard tank company, complete with superheavy tanks and backed up by a Reaver titan and a Warhound titan. While my own Reaver Titan set up on our side with space marine scouts as screening troops in cover around it's ankles, my space marine battle company was able to come in en masse over consecutive turns behind the imperial guard player, thanks to a distinct lack of jamming or chaos covens in his area.
I had intended to shoot up his transports and then assault the troops inside, so my marine company would have an assault to hide in during the IG player's next shooting phase. But I discovered to my horror that the 16 or so Chimera transports he had brought were in fact EMPTY. It seems he only had so much room in his car, so he'd left all the actual infantry at home! While this seems a very odd thing to do for an unlimited-points game, it quite nicely left my space marines stranded behind a sea of battlecannons, and only his desire to shoot my tanks first saved my marines' ability to fight. Krak grenades, melta bombs, and the odd powerfist or meltagun did most of the work.
HOT REAVER-ON-REAVER ACTION
Let's face it... no matter how you arm these monsters, a reaver titan is pretty much capable of savaging another reaver titan unassisted in 2 turns. With the sort of help you find in an apocalypse game, even a Reaver titan stands up to only one turn of firing.
My Reaver went first, assisted by a squadron of my predator tanks who downed a few void shields. An apocalypse barrage launcher stripped the remaining shields from my opponent, and I savaged him down to 2 structure points and a lot of engine hits with a Turbolaser and a stratch built Volcano Cannon. Sadly, I inflicted no weapon hits and no "cannot fire next turn" hits, which I was counting on to slow his counterattack.
The IG player's reaver went next, preceded by a tremendous amount of battlecannon and lascannon shots from an approaching company of Leman Russ tanks. They stripped my shields, and while his vulcan megabolter could not harm me, his plasma cannon inflicted some engine hits while his single shot Vortex Missile ripped through my titan like a hot knife. His Warhound titan joined in and finished me off with a Turbolaser shot.
STERNGUARDS FOR THE KILL
I had two squads of sternguard veterans in the IG player's backfield at this point. In an unlimited-points scenario such as this, both 10 man squads were fully equipped with Combi-meltas, and each squad had a librarian attached to them. The librarian's job was to give the veterans a 5+ save and, more importantly, teleport them around at 24" per turn. Though an enemy psychic hood was limiting the effectiveness of this tactic, one sternguard squad managed to teleport in behind the enemy reaver titan and unload with it's remaining 7 melta shots. The damaged Reaver titan went down quite easily to this tactic, freeing my surviving predators and razorbacks to unload on other things.
80 PERCENT CASUALTIES FOR THE WIN
Doesn't seem like much of a win, but I did sweep the IG player off the board (Minus his superheavies, which Ranillon was dancing with) and claimed an objective marker or two in the process. Oddly, about 1/3 of my marine casualties came not from incoming fire but rather from exploding tanks. With so many krak, meltabomb, and powerfist hits each turn against densely packed IG tanks, I was losing marines at a steady rate to 6's on armor penetrations when they killed a tank. One unit of assault marines in particular was reduced to a single model without ever being fired upon, due to 5 successful assaults with melta bombs.
LESSONS LEARNED
1 - For their points and/or cost in Assets, Orbital Bombardments are useless against tanks. Even strength 10 ones. Quite often, you'll just inconvenience a tank or two. If you get them free as part of a formation or as an ability from your army codex, fine. But don't waste an asset on them, and don't aim at tanks.
2 - Teleporting Sternguard Squads with combi meltas. A squad is pretty much guaranteed to kill a superheavy target and then rough up any infantry they see on the way to an objective marker. Even after they're out of combi weapon shots, they still have krak grenades at no extra cost! If you're not limited by points and you have an asset that allows all your units to be scoring units, then there is no reason not to overload on these as much as you can. Mine are represented by Deathwatch marines, since there are no current rules for Deathwatch.
3 - A Titan, any Titan, must endeavor to engage the enemy line from OVER 60" away, and use it's 96" or 120" range guns. If it cannot do this for any reason (physical limit of table size), it will attract fire and die on turn 2.
4 - Psychic Hoods are normally wonderful for cutting down on the dirty psy stuff the enemy is pulling on you. But a Psychic Hood has a limited range, and in Apocalypse it is easy for an enemy psyker to be out of range. A DARK ANGELS Psychic Hood, on the other hand, HAS NO MAXIMUM RANGE. One Dark Angel librarian with a psy hood can interfere with each and every enemy psyker in an Apoc game, no matter where he stands or how large the board.
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You know, it really doesn't take this long to make trees. Not in total anyway. But recall that I'm a 40k gamer with 3 small kids and a 60 hour a week job. Trees don't take this much time, life does. =) Anyway, on with part 3.
This time around, we're skipping over painting and basing the trees (we'll come back to that later), and are instead looking at cheap scenery bases to put all my cheap trees on. Recall that I put a rare earth magnet in the base of each of the large trees? Well that's because I'm basing them on steel terrain bases. Really CHEAP steel, in the form of a used whiteboard that a friend got out of a dumpster for me.
You can see that I've marked the whiteboard up with a sharpie and laid out the shapes of the terrain bases before I make the first cut. Metal this thin can be cut with a hand saw, tin snips, or a jig saw. I prefer a jig saw, partly because I already own one and because it's much faster and neater.
The back of the whiteboard is darker and has a thin layer of rubber. That means this is the side that things will stick to better and will cover in one coat. (The white might have to be painted first, and the paint might not stick.) For this portion, get yourself some PVA glue, a disposable paintbrush, and some box lids. Don't forget to cover your workspace in paper, as this is gonna be messy!
Use the brush to coat the base in glue. Make sure you lay the glue on thick, that there are no gaps, and that it goes all the way to the edge. This may be old news to some of you modellers out there, but it bears repeating. Your flock and gravel won't stick well if the glue is too thin, and your terrain will start going bald early in life. Nobody wants that. =)
I'm using two kinds of material on these bases; brown sand and green flock. The heavier of the two should go on first. Pour the sand out in a pattern on the base, and be generous with it. You'll end up with a mound of extra sand that isn't stuck down, and that's fine. You can quickly flip the base over and catch the excess in the box lid to be reused.
Now on to the other box lid to pour the lighter green flock over it. Again, heap it on. If you have enough, you can even swish the terrain base around in the box to cover it more easily. Then turn the base on it's edge and shake and tap the excess off into the box lid.
Voila. 18 terrain bases. Spray them with acryllic sealer once the glue is dry to extend their lifespan under your miniatures' feet.
Note that the bases on the left look different than the ones on the right. One base was a failed experiment in static grass, and I switched to using finer flock. But the difference in shading on the rest is the glue. The ones on the left were done using PVA glue, and there was enough extra stickiness to trap some green flock in amongst the sand. The ones on the right were after I ran out of PVA glue and switched to a spray adhesive instead. It makes for a thinner layer of stickiness, and there's no extra to trap the second color of flock. I think I prefer the PVA glue ones better.
Stay tuned for Part IV, where I finally get around to painting all these dang trees. =P
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For those of you who will be following our blog off the web and onto the convention center floor at Origins this year, you'll be able to find us by THIS 4 foot tall sign I'll have up by our tables in the miniatures hall. Look for us, find us, game with us, chat our ear off with stories of the hobby!
We'll have info about our game times and other fun details attached to it. Enjoy.
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Okay, here's the down and dirty of it. For those of you tuning in late, the goal here is to make 18 woods sections complete with flocked bases, 36 trees and 36 bushes... all for 39 $US. Today I cover the construction of the trees themselves.
Start by drilling 6 small holes in a GW round base, cutting 3 lengths of floral wire, and pulling 3 sprigs of greenery off the bunch you grabbed at a discount craft store. Take care to leave a section on the underside of the round base large enough to hold one of the magnets. (More on that later.)
Use floral tape to bind the 3 sprigs into a bunch as shown, and loop the 3 wires through the GW round base like so. The wires will hold the tree firmly onto the base so that even rough handling and ill placed tanks cannot damage the tree.
Place the bundle of greenery on the base and wind the three wires around it. I find that making one of the wires go the opposite direction from the other two adds stability to your tree, as well as forcing the smaller branches out and away from each other. Finish the top of the tree off by wrapping 1 wire around each of the sprigs of greenery, so that you get 3 large branches at the top of the tree going out in different directions.
Now take a bit of floral tape and wrap the tree trunk. It'll take a little practice to get the tape to go around the branches, but this too helps spread them out to make it look more tree-ish.
Tear off a bit of floral clay and cover the tree trunk. You can leave this step off if you're pressed for time or otherwise like the look of the floral tape tree trunk, but the clay allows you to texture the trunk a bit and allows you to create "roots" to cover up the wire and the slot in the GW round base. Give it a few days to dry so it's not sticky before you work with it further. It will never be as hard as sculpy or Green Stuff miniature clay, but it's a heck of a lot cheaper.
Fill the bottom of the GW round base (or the large half of the bottom if it has a slot bisecting it like mine) with more clay. Be sure to mush it in there real well, so that it flows around the wire in the base. once it dries, the wire will hold the clay in place. (if you find this isn't the case and your clay keeps coming out... superglue it.) BEFORE it dries, make an indent in the clay for your rare earth magnet, then glue the magnet in place once the clay is hardened.
Behold, one tree. And a very excited Kroot Mercenary for scale comparison.
Coming up in Part III... painting and flocking trees.
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For the upcoming RTT at Origins, one of my tasks is coming up with enough woods sections to equip three 4x6 tables. Since we have no trees, I need to make or buy them. I could buy them, but each terrain base of trees would cost roughly 8 bucks if I use GW trees or a decent competitor, and that doesn't count the cost of prepping the base itself. Since I need roughly 18 sections of woods, that's over 130 $US... and that's unacceptable.
No, for this project, I'll be doing 18 woods sections, including 36 trees and 36 bushes, for a total cost of 39 $US.
Here's what we need for the project.
- 1 pack GW Round bases (37 count) - $8
- 1 spool Floral Wire - $2
- 2 spools Floral Tape - $3
- 2 spools Floral Clay - $4
- 2 bunches of small-leaf fake greenery, on sale 50% off - $6
- 2 buckets modelling flock, on sale 50% off - $7
- 1 pack 40 rare earth magnets - $5
- 1 tube PVA glue - $4
- assorted scrap sheet metal - free
The idea is that we cut the sheet metal and cover it in flock to provide the base of the terrain. Then I build up trees and shrubs on the round bases, and put a magnet on the bottom of the taller trees so they won't fall over.
Stay tuned for Part 2, the basic assembly.
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Fast forward to sometime in 995.M02, or 1995 if you prefer. The Black Codex years of 2nd Ed are behind us, and while armor penetration rolls have gotten easier, everyone is still photocopying blast templates so they'll have enough blind grenade markers for a typical game. Meanwhile, Armorcast is making fantastic vehicles that we never thought would see the light of day in our favorite 28mm wargame. As a result, the battles are getting larger. We're still gaming every week, but now massed battles of 10000 points or more are happening regularly.
My own Space Marine chapter, the Distant Sons, are better defined now, and I've narrowed them down to a single paint scheme. The Distant Sons are unusual for a marine chapter at this time, since they're fielding marines in old-fashioned squads of 10. Better yet, I've got banners now, and they're starting to look like a proper force.
It's in the larger battles that Commander Qalsone (call-SOWN) loses his invincible aura once and for all. There's just too much armor-defeating nastiness roaming around now, and my typical opponant is now an Imperial Guard player, so I'm learning to despise battlecannons. It's because of all these imperial versus imperial fights and high body counts that we start to develop a storyline.
At first, Ranillon and I are just engaging in "war games". Qalsone and his marines attack an imperial guard garrison with "low power" weapons and they see how long it takes them to repel us. But the larger games played at the shop aren't buying that idea, so pretty soon we have our own Age of Apostacy going on, with marine fighting marine alongside IG players, and nobody is sure who is the traitor and who is the loyalist!
In the end, Ranillon's IG and my Distant Sons marines are on the winning side of the 60,000 point world-ending battle. [The game store closed down soon after.] Under Qalsone's leadership, the Distant Sons claimed the lives of a great multitude of loyal followers of the Emperor who had been led astray by their greedy commanders. A price was to be paid for this "victory", and our imperial forces were exiled and sent on an indefinate crusade. [Ranillon and I changed jobs and moved to Ohio.]
In 999.M02, Qalsone was given the opportunity to redeem his chapter's honor and return the Distant Sons to the Emperor's grace. Preparations were made to take part in a Great Crusade [the 1999 Chicago Grand Tournament], and new marines were drafted and prepared. Qalsone was promoted to Captain of the 3rd Company, becoming a Space Marine Captain at last. He was given one of the chapter's relics to aid him in combat, a weapon claimed from a fallen Inquisitor.
Onward...
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Summer, 990.M02. (That's way back in 1990 for most of us.) Having been introduced to Epic scale 40K, my college friends convince me that to REALLY enjoy the hobby, I should get into the 28mm scale Warhammer 40K as well. Turns out, they were right. (Rob Elrick, wherever you are, I blame you for draining my bank account over the years in all the steady tithing to Games Workshop I have done since then.)
With a borrowed copy of the 2nd Edition "Black Codex" rules, I set out to create a Space Marine chapter. Rhinos are $15 for a box of three, but the plastic beaky marine sets have just gone out of print. So instead, I buy a box of Space Rangers minis for my first units of tactical and devastator marines. My painting skills are terrible, but I managed one decent model, an olive and yellow sergeant with a distinctive letter Q on his chest. He's the prettiest, he's in charge. So while he leads Q squad, this Veteran Sergeant is also in charge of R and S squads. I name him Qalsone. (call-SOWN)
For the next two years, Sergeant Qalsone leads his tactical squads against the worst my local gaming group can dish out. In the vast, futuristic wasteland that was the Craddock house's kitchen and garage, he and his men faced down Howling Banshees, genestealer cults, Goff and Deathskull ork clans, chaos marines of tzeentch, and even Squat warrior brotherhoods. Though the men he led often paid with their lives, Qalsone himself never died, his Refractor Field and Stasis Grenade were always just enough to keep him alive.
Thirty-seven consecutive games he survived, clearly blessed by the Emperor himself. The time had come for Qalsone to be promoted, and a two-wound lieutenant he became. He pioneered the new paint scheme that my Distant Sons marines would carry into the future as the game headed into it's 3rd edition, and he often assumed command of numerous squads of the newly minted 3rd Company. As armies got bigger and the stomping of Titans' feet could now be felt, grander things were soon to come...
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