What's On My Table: 11/17/2016

After last weekend's event, things have slowed down a bit on the hobby front. The 40k Escalation League continues on, and I scored full points in round 1, putting me somewhere in the top 5 or so. Attempting to continue this momentum, I started painting up my new Medusan Immortals squad for 30k. I plan to use them as Command Squads in 40k, with storm shields and special weapons. They should be a pretty rock-hard unit :)

I am trying to convince my sweetheart to let me get a Caestus Assault Ram for them, but I may have to settle for a papercraft proxy until I can convince her!

Today an old friend of mine met me at the game shop to get in a League game. It was 1000 points, my Iron Hands versus his Orks. He was able to field a surprising number of units for 1000 points. I played an Anvil Strike Force, using an Armored Task Force and a Land Raider as my HQ. I was able to put a surprising amount of firepower out in the opening turns, but eventually I was reduced to my solitary Land Raider by turn 5. Despite being able to shoot 2 times per turn, it finally succumbed to the tide of green powerklaws and rokkits at the end of turn 5, signalling my tabling. AV13 spam is fun, but I would definitely had preferred to take more Dreads. I would have liked to drop the Tactical squad I was required to bring (league rules, I had to take 2 units I used in the previous round) and instead take another Contemptor, but I was already locked in so I had to make do.

It also would have helped to remember I had both a pintle-mounted stormbolter and a Multimelta on my Landraider. I would have inflicted much more damage had I remembered those...

ChowHammer 2016 - Carnage for Charity (Round 2 Report)

PART 2: Orks vs. Iron Hands on The Barren Steppes

For my second game of the day, I played yet another Ork player. This time, it was a mechanized Meganob list coupled with a particularly brutal Bomber detachment, including the super heavy bomber! It was quite an impressive model, with the contents of practically an entire bitz box dumped onto it.

I wasted a turn of shooting on it before I realized it was a pointless exercise. I was under the impression that knocking 3 points off a Superheavy gave you a VP, but in this tournament that ended up not being the case.

This game went south pretty quickly. I strong-sided my right side of the board, on an objective on my side of the board. Grav-Cents and my Grav-heavy tactical squad hunkered down, dumping shots on an advancing truck full of Meganobz. I popped the truck and the Nobz hopped out, which I then proceeded to dump bucketfuls of Grav-cannon fire from the Grav-Cents. Unfortunately for me, my opponent had a large stockpile of event tickets (see prior report) and burned through a large number of them to give the Meganobz invulnerable save rerolls.

 

Once you let nobz into your Cents, you are gonna have a bad time...

I murdered most of them before they arrived, but his Warboss managed to make contact and begun to slaughter the hapless Centurions wholesale at that point.

Meanwhile, my poor tactical sub-squad (only a single grav-gun as the special weapon) tried to take the hill objective. Finding their weapons ineffective against the Deffdread, they quickly became fertilizer for Ork agricultural endeavors.

My Iron Father quickly leaped up to the top in order to continue the fight, shrugging off multiple hits from the Deffdread and slaying it in single combat with his mighty Chainfist. Unfortunately, however, his command squad didn't accompany him and found themselves beset upon by hordes of the greenskins!

In the end, I realized I should have read the mission objectives better. Thinking that all objectives were of equal value, I attempted to claim the hill, when in reality the objectives in our deployment zones were worth double points. So I lost this game pretty soundly.

ChowHammer 2016 - Carnage for Charity (Round 1 Report)

Part 1: The Feudal World

Intro:

The Carnage for Charity event is a great event held every year at my local game store. It's a fun and wacky day of gaming that directly benefits the local community by donating all proceeds to a local support shelter. We also round up tons of donations in clothes, food, and personal hygiene supplies. We also make it into somewhat of a pot-luck event, where everybody brings food! Thus, ChowHammer is a very popular event in these parts. Bonus internet points if you know which one is me!

Breaking previous records, we had a 22 player turnout this year. We raised $1148 for the MyHouse shelter, as well as a huge amount of clothes and food. For donating, players were awarded "tickets" based on an approximate value of their donations, which were used for fun in-game effects. You could use tickets on shenanigans such as rerolling dice, forcing an opponent to reroll dice, giving a unit FNP or an invulnerable save for the turn... etc.

You also could use the tickets you earned to gain entry for some very unusual units! The Points Limit for the tournament was 2000 points, but with tickets, you could buy "slots" for a Superheavy unit, or even use 30k lists! I had considered using 30k Iron Hands but decided against it this time. I stuck with a familiar 40k Fist of Medusa formation, with a decent mix of Grav, Dreadnoughts, and tough Command Squads.

PART 1: Iron Hands Fist of Medusa Vs. Ork CAD on the Feudal World

In round 1, I drew one of my old friends "from the good ole days." We have played many games together since I entered the game at the end of 4th edition, so it was a very laid back and fun game! He was playing Orks in a CAD, mostly mechanized in trucks, wagons, or riding bikes.

Mechanized Boyz with Heavy Armor, they used Trucks and Battlewagons to leap across the board. Using my superior ranged weaponry of the Lazorbacks and Dreadnoughts, I managed to explode a Battlewagon and wreck a truck, as well as break a unit of ork bikes, before they got too close. But it wasn't enough...

  

Didn't take long to get in my front lines!

On the other side of the board, my Command Squads made short work of a biker squad and a squad of nobz on foot, vaporizing them in a hail of plasma discharge.

The Contemptor put up a valiant fight, but fell to a band of Waaagh'ing Nobz with Powerklawz! The tactical squads were as grass before the scythe, however, falling in droves without inflicting much damage to the bloodthirsty horde.

Taking a battlewagon ram head on, the Drednought stood defiant!

Meanwhile, a wave of boys descended upon my centurions.

Grabbing the objective, my Dreadnought hunkered down for the remainder of the last turn. The boys turned their fury onto my Razorback, attempting to secure more VPs through unit kills. They succeeded in popping 2 out of my 3 razorbacks in the last turn, securing the win by a single VP! It was a fun and close game throughout.

Projects Update- 6/17

Today was a very productive day! Using left-over soil/glue mix from my Tank Trap Barricades, I was able to base a LOT of miniatures. All of my Space Marines now have the material on their bases, and are now just awaiting a quick drybrush to finish up. Here are a few units I completed today (Finally done and table-ready with a quick coat of paint on the base!):

5 Grey Knights (In power armor, 1 w/ Incinerator)
6 Assault Marines (5 + 1 Sergeant)
1 Mephiston
1 Regular Chaplain w/ Plasma Pistol
1 Terminator with Assault Cannon

In Ork business, I got my ENTIRE collection primed today! Expect a review, of the amazing product I used to complete this daunting task, in the near future. I am saving it for Saturday, since I have been neglectful of the product reviews as of late. Anyway, here is a list of the Ork models I primed today:

36 Ork Boyz with choppas and sluggas
4 Ork Boyz with big shootas
10 Ork Nobz
2 Ork Warbosses
6 Ork Deffkoptas

I have also gotten consent from my wife! She is finally going to help me paint all that ork flesh... It doesn't seem like such a huge task when you know that somebody is going to help share the work load.

I promise to get some good pictures of my recent work soon! For now, I am just going to try to keep up my momentum!

Until next time-
FP135

Apologies

First off, I am sorry I have not been posting as regularly lately. Combination of life, working on the new webzine (self-imposed deadline for mid-May), and still trying to do hobby-related things has slowed down my posting rate a bit.

Life: My son has been sick a lot lately, which means I have been required to pick him up from daycare early a lot. This is quite a hassle, since I live 45 minutes one-way from the daycare, so it is at least an hour and a half round-trip each time I have had to go get him. I have also wasted a lot of time in doctor's offices, only for them to tell me it is a viral illness that they can do nothing about. I find that hard to believe, seeing as he runs a 103 degree F temperature almost every day for the last week... But luckily Motrin or Tylenol brings the temp down for a little while. Today he got up at a wonderful 3 AM and refused to go back to bed, much to my wife's and my dismay. Oh well, who needs sleep?

Webzine: I have been working on a tutorial on building a Cathedral terrain piece using mainly cork tiles and a hot glue gun. Makes for interesting work. I would post it on here, but why would you read my webzine then???

Hobby-related: I have been working hard on painting up the Ork contents of the AoBR set. So far, I have all the green flesh-tones done on all the orks, and now I am just painting their garments and weapons. I have the warboss done, and am chipping away at the Nobz Mob. I decided to do a slight variant of Blood Axe clan, giving them an urban camoflague pattern, and adding in red accents to liven them up. Sometimes it makes it look kind of cluttered, like on the warboss, but I can paint it quickly which is more important to me at the time. I plan on purchasing another AoBR set in the next month to make a 1000 pt Ork list that I can build from. I already purchased the new codex for them yesterday, and have started throwing around ideas on how to put together my next army.

I will continue to plug away at that webzine. I know you all are anticipating its arrival, so vote on the name for it if you have not already so I can finish the title page early! As of right now, it is a tie between Hobby Bucket and FoxPhoenix's Hobby Monthly, so break that tie!