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Was a more enjoyable game certainly. I need to forget 40k though and play Epic like Epic, easier said then done. I was surprised that the Firelord didn't receive any bonus for flying.

Chaos lack of mobility seems to be their biggest issue and the lack of los blocking terrain make it hard. My intention as well as yours was to go straight for the objectives, but wasn't as easy due to said mobility.

Next game I will be hogging more of the terrain, supporting the Primarchs with more than just hope and rolling better on the dice, hopefully.

A long overdue update....

So this blog and indeed, my wargaming life in general, has taken a bit of a back-seat recently. We were planning on selling our house and moving so my man-cave was totally dis-assembled and packed up so that potential buyers could see in and around the room without being put off by an acreage of man-dollies but due to a combination of various factors, we decided not to sell and stay where we are. So I got my games room back and the tedious process of putting everything back where it should be and putting the table back up (my gaming room is very 'space conservative' so fitting all my stuff in there is much like a real-life, 3D game of Tetris).

Anyway, I now can start playing games again and after recently acquiring some Squats and Imperial Guard courtesy of Fifty, I have now managed to round out the forces that I already had and fill in the blanks so I can now field armies of roughly 8000 points for both Squats and Imperial Guard (more so if I include Titans), so two fairly sizeable armies there. To ease myself back into things, I thought I would have a quick game of 4000 points per side and play with some of my shiny new (well, not so new!) toys. Here are the force organisations and the starting layout as a bit of a teaser. I will hope to have the batrep proper up shortly.

Imperial Guard - a fairly broad mix I think of tanks combined with an infantry company for balance. Plenty of artillery to sit in the backfield and pound away plus the obligatory commissars to keep the chain of command moving for the static artillery.



Squats - nothing out of the ordinary here, a little of everything that Squats can take. Looking forward to seeing how the Goliath Mega Cannons perform.



Set-up

http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/647331-Prelim3.html?m=2

Baneblades and Stormblades either side of an Infantry company advancing down the centre. A Commissar sitting with the static Whirlwinds and Manticores for orders. Leman Russ company on one flank, Sentinels holding the other flank.





For the Squats, Leviathan straight up the middle, all 3 Overlord Airships spread out, half the Guild Biker company on one flank, the other half on the other side. I have also divided the Infantry Brotherhood in half to take advantage of getting the heavy weapons into firing positions and the berserkers into combat quickly. Land Trains either side to consolidate the flanks - I suspect they will be hard to take down.

Trying it all out on my new Mat of War which replaced my ropey old green mat I got from a railway model shop and that was shedding and tearing. Still haven't managed to get the creases and folds out the Mat of War yet though!

Aside from this battle, I also have a well-deserved week off work and will hope to get some Specialist gaming in then. Waiting for a copy of Space Crusade to arrive in the post (yes, I know it isn't technically a Specialist Game!) so that could be up on the blocks along with some Dark Future and maybe BFG or Man O War depending on what time I get.

As per usual, it's all work and no play so not as much done on this bat rep as I had wanted but here is the first turn at least, and very profitable it turned out to be for the Squats anyway! I had deployed the two armies without really checking their stats too much so was surprised to find that the Squat Guild Bikes and Squat Guild Trikes move 60cm on charge orders which was happily enough to send them barreling into the Sentinels on one flank and the Leman Russ squadron on the other flank. The rest of the Squat army trundled up the middle with the Overlord Armoured Airships floating either side of the city.



In the first fire phase, there was some counter battery fire as one of the Goliath Mega Cannons traded fire with a squadron of Basilisks. Neither side inflicted any damage as the barrages scattered. The other Goliath Mega Cannon targeted the Imperial Guard detachment advancing through the ruins but only managed to kill 2 stands. The Imperial Guard army had more artillery on first fire and so plinked away at the advancing Squat Warrior Brotherhood and took a vicious tally - some 10 stands were killed, not enough to break the company but enough to nearly completely wipe out the berserker detachment. The only other casualty from the IG artillery fire was a void shield on the nearby land train that took a hit from a scattered barrage.

Close combat and the Squat Guild Trikes wiped out the Sentinel squadron bar one stand which failed it's morale test and went on to fall back orders.



On the other flank, the Squat Guild Bikes took a horrific toll on the Leman Russ Company, destroying 6 tanks - 2 full squadrons and breaking the company, all for the loss of one bike stand.



The advance fire segment continued in much the same vein for the Squats - the Baneblade Company loosed everything it had into the nearby Overlord airship, only to watch the shots pass harmlessly through the self-sealing fuel cells. In return, the airship took out a Baneblade. On the other side, the other airship took out the other Baneblade support card. In the centre, the Leviathan took out the remaining Baneblade support card. All of which made for some happy reading for the Squats when the points were tallied up after turn one:

Victory points total 15 for Imperial Guard and 31 for Squats.

Given that the total to win is 45, it is looking good for the Squats thus far. Time for the Imperial Guard to rally, reposition and get some fire down!

Been in the dark recently and a little short of hobby love given some fairly strenuous work commitments and general family drudgery but I am still going and pursuing my Specialist Games addiction!

Currently, the SG bug has bitten me in the Battlefleet Gothic gland. I bought a small Ork fleet off Ebay for a reasonable price just before Christmas (and all the more reasonable when I see some of the crazy prices that Ork fleets go for - Ebay is rapidly becoming a no-go zone to pick up bargains now and that is a sad thing). I decided to add to the fleet with the addition of some Hulks and Roks but given that GW don't and didn't make any official models for them means I have to fall back on my pitiful modelling skills. But all is not entirely lost give that I have 20 years plus worth of bits and bobs in a massive box to plunder so I felt reasonably confident I could come up with something approaching what is described and pictured in the BFG and Armada rulebooks.

First up the Ork Hulk. These are made from several BBQ lava rocks glued together along with a selection of bits and pieces I managed to scavenge. I have another one but this one is a wee bit more photogenic





I will freely admit, they do suffer from the 'looks like it has been slathered in glue and dipped in the bits box' syndrome but I think there really isn't much other way to picture Ork Hulks and Roks. I mean, they are supposed to look like an asteroid with a bunch of random crap bolted on to them. I need to use some liquid greenstuff just to fill in some holes/gaps and generally tie the bits and pieces together.

The Roks; this is just one of 3 I have put together - all constructed in a similar way to the Hulks but just slightly smaller. Again, I wanted to emphasise the 'asteroid covered in vaguely mechanical junk and guns' look.





The kitbashing also continued in earnest as just after Christmas, I obtained a number of Tyranid models - a couple of hive ships and a whole bunch of drone ships. Again, like the Ork fleet, the official models are few and far between so I was forced to try and come up with some sort of workable solution for some Tyranid cruisers - a bit more tricky given that I will need at least three or four of them. But, the Tyranid BFG aesthetic just seems to be gluing a bunch of 40K bits together so hopefully I have succeeded in that respect. The fluff seems to suggest that Hive Ships are basically mature drone ships that have grown and expanded so I pictured my cruisers as slightly bigger and bulkier versions of the drone ships - hopefully, I have succeeded there. I'll get some pictures up tomorrow if anyone gives the tiniest gak.

I'm interested in seeing your tyranid ships

The Ork ones you have kit bashed look good, a little bit of work to meld the different parts in to the rock and they will look fantastic.

 GiraffeX wrote:
I'm interested in seeing your tyranid ships

The Ork ones you have kit bashed look good, a little bit of work to meld the different parts in to the rock and they will look fantastic.

Well, for better or for worse, here are the results of my Tyranid 'creativity'. First up, the official models so you can see the aesthetic I was aiming for, for those who haven't seen Tyranid BFG ships before. The more observant among you will notice that these are cast from resin and not metal. I'm not going to comment on it or respond to comments in this thread so draw your own conclusions and make of it what you will.

The Hive Ship - not as bulky as I thought it would be given it is the Tyranid capital ship:



The drone ship - this is what I was aiming to make my cruisers look like style-wise. The cruisers would need to sit somewhere in size between a drone ship and the Hive ship:



My kitbashed cruisers. Well, I did what I could with the bits that I had. I'm reasonably pleased enough I suppose. They'll do. Like the Orks in my previous post, they need some liquid green stuff splashed on to blend the parts and joins together and to tie it all in and obviously, they need painting too at some point.







All of them together for scale. If anything, the cruisers are perhaps a smidge too big maybe but I was somewhat constrained by the size of the claws that I had to spare.

I think they look really good actually.

I don't really know BFG was after I stopped playing GW Games. But they actually look like Tyranid space ships, very organic and still very tyranid

Very nice looking cruisers. Glad to see some Battlefleet Gothic stuff going on.

Actually been looking at some classic stuff myself recently - specifically Adeptus Titanicus. This all kicked off with some complaints about titan-on-titan and knight-on-knight games in 40k; they tend towards two-to-three-turn mutual annihalation, without much feel of detail or tactics to the games.

At which point the possibility of resurrecting AT II (the one in Epic magazine) came up; and it worked really well. Even just two classic Warlords makes for a fun slugging match - the fact that you need to manouvre to change from the gatling on one arm (which is good at scything through void shields) to the volcano cannon on the other (which can punch through the heavier armoured bits of the hull) meant you couldn't just stay still and pound away.

Really want to have a try with the very original AT II rules - there was a whole campaign rules set in there, as I recall...

I like the Nid cruisers.

I love this thread! Subbed

So an overdue update to my blog since it has been a while and I have moved house and in the process, gained a new man-cave. Yes, it is a garage but it is an integral garage so not as cold as a regular 'outside' garage (here in the UK anyway) and much bigger than my old room. We were planning to get the garage converted into another living room but decided against it, mainly as it is perfectly fine to store and play games in there - it isn't cold at all with the floor carpeted.

Anyway, thanks in part to HoneyBee Works resurrecting the old S6 canals:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/685623.page

I took the plunge and bought a set, along with some roads and building bases for my Epic terrain set. They arrived speedily, so I had a go at setting them up and was inspired to set out a table and have a game of Epic for my first game since the house move. I just threw a load of terrain on the table to see what I could make with it:





Immediate thoughts - I need much more roads and building bases!

The roads and canals are spiffy enough and join the back of my painting queue, probably to be completed some time circa 2050 at my current rate. They look great on the table, however. One nuisance was my mats, having been rolled up for 6 months, refuse to sit flat - the green Mat O War was a creased mess so I went with my brown desert mat, which wasn't much better to be honest. This is why I prefer the neoprene 'mouse mat' style mats; they almost always unroll and sit perfectly.

Anyway, I pulled a couple of boxes at random of the shelves and bodged together a couple of very quick forces basically by the method of picking some cards, adding together the rough points and then doing the same for the opposing force. The two lucky participants are Chaos and Tyranids.

The Chaos force selection:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/794925-BatRep3.html?m=2

The boys have left Mortarion at home it seems. No Banelord either, controversial! Actually, it's because I didn't fancy digging out the data sheet and working out damage. I probably should have done in hindsight, because I ended up picking two Tyranid bio titans. One hopes the Lord of Battles can cope.

Tyranids:



For those unfamiliar with Epic 2nd Ed and specifically with the Tyranid Hive War expansion, Tyranids have to be constructed around synapse creatures and in turn, around a Dominatrix - the sort of hive mother. So you end up with a honeycomb arrangement of linked creatures, the idea being that a synapse creature biting the bullet could effect the creatures it is 'linked' to. That's the theory, anyway.

Here's how the forces were plonked on the table:





Chaos need to get over the canal sharpish. Angry Ron and chums are up one side, Magnus the other and the Lord of Battles with Fulgrim and kids in tow rumble down the middle. Nothing too complicated - the cannon of Khorne park themselves on a hill. Not the best field of fire, but it will have to do.

Tyranids:





Two packs of termagants on the flanks along with a Harridan and Carnifex gang on the right and gargoyles on the left. I made sure to include Tyranid warrior and Hive Tyrants on both flanks to help the synapse. The Dominatrix is lurking in cover in the middle with bio titan bodyguards.

An obligatory final shot:



I will try and get the game played tomorrow, by myself or maybe with the wife if I can rope her in.

Who will win? Tyranids have the numbers and the bio titans and I know from past experience they can be difficult to put down. Chaos have three Primarchs, however, and they can be mean. We shall see!