Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

How'd you end up with 3 boarding captains?

No idea... I found them in bags and put them together. They look like actual FW models too... don't know why I don't have the packaging. I will probably pull the 2 extra. I do have 10 boarding marines I could build... but I can't see any possible use for them. Maybe I'll throw one of the captains in with them & see if I can sell the lot.

weren't the boarding captains one of the FW event exclusives a few years back? You'll probably get a reasonable amount for those if sold separately

Good point.

Finally got the Halloween Army out for a couple of runs! First was a 1000 pt skirmish with the Leagues in which I got my butt handed to me (granted, I was just trying to re-learn the army so just doing the bare minimum). Locally... the Leagues have crushed everyone they've faced so far.

However... Solar_lion came over to help me celebrate Halloween and of course I had to play the Halloween army. Granted... it was only the second time I'd tried it so still all very new to me... but I though I had a decent enough grasp on things to give it a go. 2000 points, Tempest of War cards for the missions.

We drew normal deployment and the special rule for the game was that command re-rolls would cost 2CP instead of 1.

I have such luminaries in my list as...

Pazuzu (bloodthirster)
Cthulhu (GUO)
Cerberus (Karanak)
The Headless Horseman (skullmaster)
The Grim Reaper (exalted flamer)
3x3 goblins (nurglings)
2x10 zombies, 1x10 mummies (plague bearers)
2x6 werewolves (flesh hounds)
1x3 giant bats (screamers)
Haunted Tree (feculent gnarlmaw)

Necrons list included the following... I know I don't have this all correct, SL can comment and I'll fix.
Silent King
Nightbringer
Ophidian Destroyer Lord (?) & plasmacyte
several other characters
5 Locust Destroyers
warriors
immortals
deathmarks
5 scarabs


I can't begin to tell you how much of a joy it was to play on a full-sized table and without the stupid Nephalim BS. Can't wait for something else to come along a supersede it. I also like my terrain much better than the stuff I've been playing on at the local store.

Here's the table at deployment. SL deploys mainly to my left and center, with the Nightbringer and a screen of scarabs threatening the right. I do have Pazuzu set up to kill such monstrosities... with an 8 wound cap per phase and the ability to ignore wound caps himself... so I'm a real threat to the bringer of night. I'm scattered from one end to the other. The nurglings ability to infiltrate (though it's called something else) means I start the game with 4 out of 5 objectives. My heavy hitters (Pazuzu and Cthulhu) are in the center hiding behind the tower from SL's massive Necron fire-power with a bunch of zombies as a screen. The haunted tree... a fortification... is in the tower center-table. My right is where my cavalry goes (as any good medieval commander will tell you) and has two wolf packs supported by Cerberus and The Headless Horseman. The Grim Reaper and the ghosts are right center... until the ghosts discovered they had somewhere else to be and jumped ship (I had forgotten to put them in the list!). The little group of screamers are hiding behind a bunker on my far left, acting as my reserves.


Hordes of Necrons:

The Halloween right flank:

Haunted Tree in a haunted castle:

The big dogs: Cthulhu needs a much bigger base.

Giant Bats lying in wait:

Defiant goblins objective sitting and calling insults to the Nightbringer wayyyyy.... over there!


For the first couple of turns, the Necrons were content to sit back and gun down their adversaries... a strategy that had worked for the Silent King many times before. Unfortunately, the Nurgle hosts turned out to be very difficult to dislodge and the demons stubbornly kept to their defensive positions or even out-of-site completely rather than charging forward with reckless abandon. They were not inactive however... just cagy.

The Necrons move forward cautiously.


The wolves pressed forward on the right flank in order to take advantage of the cover offered by the large, ruined laboratory. This also allowed a few different secondary objectives to be attained.


Cthulhu and the zombies moved near or into the central tower. The Necrons made short work of anything that entered the tower... but not before several secondaries were scored by those units.



With the two greater demons hanging out behind the tower, only minor damage was taken from shooting.


Bad breath from the werewolves took a couple of wounds off some scarabs.


The Nightbringer with escort move forward to wipe out the goblins on the objective to my right.


To be fair to SL, I was drawing very good cards during this period (though I was spending CP on throwing out cards I didn't think I could achieve right away) and I was making a lot of demon saves, especially those on my bloodthirster. By the end of T2 I had a considerable lead in points.

I drew my cards for T3 and all 3 objectives were pretty easily obtainable, but I had to expose myself to return fire to do it. I decided one way or the other I was eventually going to get shot up, so there was no better incentive than grabbing 3 more secondaries.

I really only have one shot of T3 as I was otherwise occupied. In short... I pushed hard on the right flank. The wolves charged forward and wiped out the scarabs while Pazuzu moved in to take out the Nightbringer. The Reaper moved up to sit on the objective after the goblins had been wiped out the turn before. Cthulhu and the surviving zombie unit stayed pat as did the (thinning) mummy pack and screamers on the left.

Of course SL's repost was painful. His army moved forward en masse, Pazuzu took a pounding as did the werewolf packs. I lost one of the mid-field objectives and had to drift back from (yet still controlled) another with my remining mummies.


Turns 4 and 5

On my left, the destroyer lord approaches driving the depleted mummies to fall back, before being destroyed altogether.




However, Cthulhu, some zombies and the giant bats respond... wiping out the destroyer and forging ahead (no pic) into a warrior blob deep in Necron territory.


On my right, the Headless Horseman and Cerberus slam into a couple of locust destroyers before being taken out by heavy fire. Most importantly... the Silent King catches up with a 3-wound Pazuzu... and well... you can guess how that went.


In the final analysis... the forces of Halloween had nearly been wiped out, Cthulhu and company excepted. They had however, controlled most of the board for much of the game and scored so many secondaries that they nearly ran through the deck (including all the discards). Though they had paid a high price... they had won the day!


Thanks for reading, and thanks SL for a really fun game. Same time next year??

Brilliant batrep, clearly much spooky fun was had!!

Thanks graven, it was fun!

Most excellent batrep. Hardy bunch that Halloween army. Sullied forth and held the field. Awesome.

 Camkierhi wrote:
Most excellent batrep. Hardy bunch that Halloween army. Sullied forth and held the field. Awesome.

"Sullied forth" LOL! Great pun!




Automatically Appended Next Post:
More building!



This is a Grim Skull miniatures model.

That is a funky biker!

Are the 6 other guys like "Damn, Jerry really going hard this week"?

LOL! Something like that...

Grimskull reminds me of those old doom rider memes and comics...

LOL! Good one Wyfox... nice to have you back!



For those old Warders of the Maelstrom still around... Wyfox's new plog is here: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/807807.page#11461853

I'm sure you're all wondering... "What is it like to play a 40k team tournament in Baraboo, Wisconsin?" If so, then today is your lucky day.

First... you play a couple of nice guys with unpainted plastic... and only get two turns in (losing in the process because your army needs more than two turns to work properly).



THEN you play a couple of guys with nicely painted armies... but one of whom has never played 40k before, so you only get two turns in (losing in the process because your army needs more than two turns to work properly).




FINALLY you play a couple of nice guys with unpainted plastic AND one of whom has never played before... so in spite of doing your best to play really fast and helping them play faster, you only get two turns in (losing in the process because your army needs more than two turns to work properly).




BONUS: Coming in dead-last results in not having to pay an entry fee for the next tournament. Could be worse...

I get that there need to be time restrictions, but they always bugged me when I went to the little tournaments at my FLGS. Not that anyone was ever intentionally sandbagging but a lot of games got cut short. With the inevitable “If we were able to finish, it would have changed the results”

Still a good way to guaranty 3 (albeit often partial) games in a day. And the hanging out and chatting with fellow geeks that accompanies that.

Haha...yeah I tend to play slow and had to play a different smaller model count army (not nids) and do a ton of practice in prep for Adepticon so that we could get more than a couple rounds in back in 2014.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Nice to see SL necrons

Out of curiosity, what about your army needed more than two turns to work?

You should be a pro at playing unpainted armies and new players by the time I get to be one of them you have to deal with

Nevelon wrote:I get that there need to be time restrictions, but they always bugged me when I went to the little tournaments at my FLGS. Not that anyone was ever intentionally sandbagging but a lot of games got cut short. With the inevitable “If we were able to finish, it would have changed the results”

Still a good way to guaranty 3 (albeit often partial) games in a day. And the hanging out and chatting with fellow geeks that accompanies that.

True. I'm used to it... but SL wasn't as was looking forward to seeing how our army plan performed... and we never really got to see that. I like bringing in new players... bringing them to a tournament if they've never played before is disrespectful to the rest of the players who've paid money to play... not stand around and listen to you explain the game.

wyomingfox wrote:Haha...yeah I tend to play slow and had to play a different smaller model count army (not nids) and do a ton of practice in prep for Adepticon so that we could get more than a couple rounds in back in 2014. Nice to see SL necrons

No one was slow-playing to gain tactical advantage... they were just playing slow because one of the teammates had never played before.

Archer wrote:Out of curiosity, what about your army needed more than two turns to work?

You're joking, right?

whalemusic360 wrote:You should be a pro at playing unpainted armies and new players by the time I get to be one of them you have to deal with

I'm used to it. Locally people field mostly unpainted armies. Lot of young kids cranked up about buying the latest and greatest. There ARE some very good painters amongst them... and most are trying. They're just buying a lot faster than they're painting and at this store in particular there's no compunction about playing unpainted figures. Some of these guys transitioned over from a big WarMachine group where they rarely if ever painted anything. Most are doing their level best though.

 Gitsplitta wrote:

wyomingfox wrote:Haha...yeah I tend to play slow and had to play a different smaller model count army (not nids) and do a ton of practice in prep for Adepticon so that we could get more than a couple rounds in back in 2014. Nice to see SL necrons

No one was slow-playing to gain tactical advantage... they were just playing slow because one of the teammates had never played before.

Oh, you misunderstood. I had to practice a lot and use a smaller model count army in order to not slow play ! My native mental state is very slow and ponderous ...it has nothing to do with trying to gain a tactical advantage.

Got it!


Automatically Appended Next Post:


Hobby Update:
I suppose it's been a while... I should update. I have been working on models. Gave a young man locally a chance for his first commission painting. Had him build and paint up the Iyanden wraith army I've been hording for a decade or so. Basic paint job, but they're very playable and it gives me the opportunity to go back at my leisure as spruce them up a bit as I like. Been working on the basing. Been making good progress, but it's slow going when you're doing an entire army in one go. I'll post a pic when the basing is done.

 Gitsplitta wrote:
Got it!


Automatically Appended Next Post:


Hobby Update:
I suppose it's been a while... I should update. I have been working on models. Gave a young man locally a chance for his first commission painting. Had him build and paint up the Iyanden wraith army I've been hording for a decade or so. Basic paint job, but they're very playable and it gives me the opportunity to go back at my leisure as spruce them up a bit as I like. Been working on the basing. Been making good progress, but it's slow going when you're doing an entire army in one go. I'll post a pic when the basing is done.

Is the gentleman Brian Kerr? He did some commissions for me a while back in regards to my Krootdar army.

Merry Christmas bud

@WyFox: No. Brian is a seasoned commission painter. This is a young guy still in H.S. Aaron. He's very prolific.

@Cam: Merry Christmas my friend. Hope you and yours have a great holiday!




Merry Christmas everyone! Thanks for continuing to support me all these years. I greatly appreciate it!

Merry Xmas me old fruit

Merry Christmas Gits!!

Hey all! Been a long while. Things here are fine.

Got one of the young bucks to build and paint my Iyanden wraith army, some of which has been sitting around in a bin for 20 years or so. He did a great job, but the paint was minimal (as I instructed)... so now that I have it and am playing it... I'm embarking on a re-paint of some of the models. I know it sounds strange, but if it wouldn't have been for his work... these models would still be in a bin. So his simple paint work inspired me to jump back in and pick them up a bit.

So... finished the normal wraithguard. Not that there isn't more that could be done, but I'm satisfied with these for now. The guys in back I did a year or two ago... the guys in front I just finished. Next will be 10 wraith blades.

I think you should play Thriller in the background whenever you start deploying your army .

Looking good!

Quite a beautiful army, very pretty. The youngun did well.