Waargh!

So there I was, churning slowly through Tom's christmas presents (4 boxes of orcs and a Tiger tank, eclectic or what?), when the D6G did it again. I was listening to their one year on review of WH40K 5th edition and they praised it so highly that before I knew what I was doing I was in my local friendly professional gaming store (firestorm games, trade street, Cardiff) looking to get a new army. This was where I had my meeting with what I believe is termed a Hammerhead. I was weighing up the pros/cons of getting the rules and perhaps a codex or 2 when over he came. In the next five minutes I managed to get three words out, but he did give me one nugget that was useful. He pointed out that the Black Reach box set had around 750 points for both the orks and space marines, as well as the rules but without all the fluff. As I can take or leave the fluff of the 40k universe I realise that this might be a good bargain, so I bought it.

When I got it home, I was very impressed with the standard of the plastics especially the defcopters. My son has claimed the orks for his army, and I think that gives him 1000points, but he still needs some runtherds. I've tried getting some on e-bay, but without much luck. I may have to bite the bullet and order them from GW.

I had a load of amazon vouchers through work so as well as appeasing the wife with some books, I bought 2 boxes of chaos space marines (emperor's children and thousand sons) to finish off my chaos army. However amazon has sent me a box of noise marines instead. I don't mind as they look cool and will probably go on the painting able next, after black reach, before the victorix british and the warlord ECW, as well as the 10mm stuff........

I had a game!

So my wife got me a year's membership of my local friendly gaming store (firestorm games in Cardiff), but I hadn't had a chance to use it yet. Then my brother promised my son that if he came to visit he'd play 40k with him having been quite the player himself back in the day. So he came down this week, and we held him to his promise. However, we didn't play 40k as neither my son nor I have a complete army (1500 points) so we decided instead to play our usual 19th century game but using the Warhammer Historicals Great War rules.

On a table with probably too much terrain we had a blast. I learnt that artillery is can be devastating. Somehow even when the barrage deviated it was always into one of my units; and my brother learnt not to charge infantry in cover with lancers. We managed a six turn game before packing up, and as usual my appalling dice rolls lead to a German victory. In my defence if the last assault phase had been kinder, I may have scraped a narrow win. As it was a failed morale check saw my 24th foot disappearing in to the distance taking a platoon of the 88th with them, and the final nail in the coffin was the scheduled appearance of yet more lancers making their appearance on my baseline.

All in all a good week, but no painting done.

Lent is over! So have celebrated by taking advantage of the Renegade minis offer to increase the size of my WW1 armies so the lead mountain looks like increasing.......

Just been looking at the lead mountain, and thought I'd share it with the world:
WW1 10mm Russians - 2 armies
WW1 10mm Austrians - 1 army
1866 10mm Austrians - 4 armies
All from Pendraken

1870 French 10mm - 4 brigades of infantry and on of heavy cavalry - from Magister Millitum.

24 28mm Greek Hoplites
24 28mm Crimean British inf
30 28mm Bavarians for FPW
12 28mm WW1 British Cavalry
24 28mm WW1 German Cavalry
90 28mm Sea Peoples
16 28mm SYW British Inf
50 28mm SYW Prussian Hussars
6mm Baccus Austrian and French armies
6mm Baccus WSS French and Bavarians

Boxes of the following plastics:
Warlord ECW (10)
Warlord Romans
Warlord Ancient British (2)
Perry French Curraissiers (2)
LOTR Rohan army
Cadian IG (2)
Space marines (3)

As well as 3 boxes of 1/72 celts my son has asked me to paint for him.

I think at my current rate of painting I should finish this in about 2-3 years! But only if I don't waste time gaming!
I had thought of going to Salute but will have second thoughts - especially with the release of plastic vikings and hoplites!

Perhaps my daughter has done me a favour and I should aim to be lead/plastic neutral this year.
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Dawn of War

I found this at the bottom of a drawer and loaded it up onto my laptop. I think I may lose lots of my life to this game especially as I'm getting back into WH40K with my son. He's collecting an orc army which I've supplemented with some judicious e-bay purchases (gretchin anyone?).

The other reason I've been playing the game is that my daughter has forced me to promise not to buy any soldiers in Lent. This has had an impact on my willingness to paint. Usually I motivate myself to crack through the grunt units or large units by promising myself that once I've done the current unit I'll get to paint the new hotness whatever that may be. Not getting any new mini's to kick start/refresh my enthusiasm for a period has really reduced my willingness to paint. I didn't think that this would be the case when I agreed as I thought it would be the opportunity to catch up and reduce the lead mountain a bit.
Roll on Easter!
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New technology

So I got one of those raspberry things and thought I'd try to see if I could keep the blog more up to date that way. So this is a trial run of a posting.
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So I do update this blog!

So I just realised that I sort of forgot about this blog! To my one follower - sorry and thank you for being interested enough in my ramblings to want to read them as soon as their posted.

So Christmas was the usual round of beer food and presents. Not much on the wargaming front this year, although I did get Tide of Iron and the Rommel expansion. I think this might be a way of getting my 8 year old into Flames of War. This is looking a better option since he has discovered the old WW2 film "the longest day" and now is obsessed with the paratroops, and this was solidified by showing him "A bridge too far" on NYE.

since then I've been relatively busy on the work front, managing to secure a job I'd been waiting for for over a year. This gives me a degree of stability so I can concentrate on other things - like gaming.

I've had a couple of games with Tom (the 8 year old), mainly using 19th century British and Prussians, usually contesting a river crossing and a town. The rules are modified WH40K so that if and when he gets his orks ready, he doesn't have to learn new rules. The main thing is that they are simplified. If anyone wants them leave a comment and I'll post them here.

Finally let me update you on the lead mountain progress:

Bought: 20 28mm US Paras

40 Plastic WOR billmen

15mm Stuart x2

15mm Universal Carriers x3

Protectorate of Menoth starter box/swordsmen/bastions

Warmachine Mark 2 rules

War of the ring rules

10 plastic Catachans

60 28mm WW2 Germans

5 15mm Stugs

15mm 88 PLatoon for FOW

Arnhem book for FOW

4 Howling Banshees

Painted: 40 28mm Zulu warBritish

20 28mm US Paras

20 28mm WW2 British

15mm FOW US para platoon

All the menoth stuff

12 28mm German WW1 Cavalry

4 15mm Italian tankettes

15mm Bergsegali platton for FOW

15mm Italian AT guns x 6

15mm Italian Infantry guns x 6

5 Plague Marines

4 Howling Banshees

10 Catachans

10 Slaanesh daemonettes

5 15mm Stugs

48 20mm Italian ww2 infantry (for my son)

2 15mm stuart tanks

3 15mm bren carriers.

Whew, that is more than I thought. The sad thing is that I don't think I've made much of an impression into the mountain!

December Merry Mithras

So it's about to be the midwinter festival and I think I'm probably not going to get any more painting done. Since my last post I've added to the Vietnam wars by painting the NVA 20mm plastics. I have to say that I'm not a great fan of soft plastics, and these have done nothing to refute my poor impression. They weren't even as detailed as the old aifix waterloo figures. so I think this is a dead end. I'll use them with my sons but not for proper gaming.

Also rebasing my 6mm armies onto polemos bases just in case I decide to get them next year. I think I can use the same basing if I want for both napoleon and Black Powder.

so painting 48 x 20mm NVA

24 x 28mm British

Bought Nil (but got a box of 28mm ECW plastics for renewing my subscription to WI)