Tale of 40K Gamers -REDUX- Part 7: Force Z!

Alrighty then, update number seven!

I came, I saw, I wept. Force Z August has come and gone and I have the recap and hilarity to share!

Firstly though, I will apologise for missing out on posting updates on the two days leading up to Force Z, I ended up being flat out on the thursday and naturally, spent 5 hours driving to Brisbane from Bundaberg on the friday so I had no progress to show on that day anyway.
What I did manage however, was to get all the models fully painted on the thursday and spent a silly amount of time staring at the finished products and feeling generally chuffed with myself.

The results!

MUSINGS:
With my hobby progress done and my drive completed all that was left to do was arrive at Cleveland assembly hall and walk away with first prize (*overbearing laughter*), what actually occurred I'm hoping becomes a bit of an urban legend and a reminder not to leave models alone with people who play rival armies to your own.

Before I explain what I'm talking about, I'm going to say that Force Z was, as it always is, an exceedingly enjoyable event. I enjoyed every game I played and had a laugh with everyone I played against.
It was great rolling dice again and I absolutely LOVED the mission format that was used on the day, I hope to see more of this at future Force Z events!

For those of you who might not know, Force Z was a 750pt event run over the course of a single day consisting of five games.
The event was shaken up a little by allowing players to choose their own mission objectives each round out of a list of six supplied in the players pack (you can find these on the Force Z #3 Facebook page), the twist being you can only pick each mission once.
It really added a layer of variety and unpredictability to the games as you had to decide what mission would be best against your opponent, while also trying to guess and prevent the opponent from achieving theirs.
Since every game utilised five objective markers in identical layouts, it sped up the preparation of each game too. You could move to your next table, plop down your objective markers as the same way as every other game, pick a mission (write it down then hide it) and start dicing off.

All in all, I'd say that this Force Z was probably the smoothest event I've been too. Unless I've missed something I really didn't see any major hiccups (aside from players playing overtime perhaps haha) and I don't think i had a single game where rule clarification became a source of contention.

So, top job and props to Alpha Hobbies for making the trip down worth it!


RECAP:
I'll go through and give a recap of the day from my perspective and hopefully everyone reading can have a good laugh as I, and many others, did on the day.

As pictured above, I managed to paint all my tacticals in time for the event, however, I had to request aid in knocking together my Spartan and (for the most part) I'm glad I did because in the end, it really ended up being the centerpeice for my army.
This was my first tournament that I've brought a painted army to as well, so I felt super happy to be placing fully painted minis on the table to fight the enemies of mankind!

As we were waiting for things to kick off, I saw my friend Simon Gojkovic and we quickly decided to grudge match each other for the first round.
I rarely win in these matches with Simon but we always have a great laugh while playing so this started the day off well in my opinion!

Game 1-

Simon was playing his award winning black and yellow Tyranids that are always a pleasure to see on the table.
We rolled off and I ended up taking the first turn. Full of enthusiasm and vigor we started the game and i prepared to bring my Spartan's full firepower to bear on Simon's winged Hive tyrant.

I pivot my spartan...roll for difficult terrain..........................................Immobilised.

Immediately after Immobilising itself

"Don't Move, their eyesight is based off movement..."

The first dice thrown of the game and of course I roll a one.

My target priority could definitely have been better this game but as soon as I couldn't move my spartan Simon was able to use cover and manueverability to avoid the worst of my shooting.
I ended up picking up first blood (my tacticals made amazing saving throws all day) on a group of rippers but that was litterally it.

Simon picked up the easy major victory and we took the remaining round time to look at some other games.

"Just turn to the right a little bit.....PLEASE!?"

Game 2-

Next up I was matched against James Allan's space wolves.

This game was a great match up against my army as James had brought along several razorbacks whice were tantalising targets for my Spartan's lascannons.

I will admit, once I popped Jame's first razorback, stranding a squad of his wolfgaurd on a backfield corner I was optimitic about this game and indeed I managed to make great saving throws on my tacticals that kept me on the advantage all game.

I had chosen to hold objectives as my mission for this game (each of the objectives worth 2 points), where as James had chosen to slay my warlord (if he killed my warlord with his, he would net 5 points, if he did it with another unit, he'd net 2 points).
I had my Captain mounted in the Spartan, which popped James razorbacks without effort leaving him no way to destroy the spartan and get to the warlord inside.

However, I wanted to snag the major victory, and James had gotten a squad of four wolfgaurd onto one of my objectives. I figured it'd be simple enough to charge them with my Captain (who had a relic blade and Artificer armour), clear them off, grab the objective and claim a big win.

What ensued was both rediculous and funny.

My Captain charged out of the spartan and in the first round of combat only managed to kill a single wolfguard. In reponse, the remaining men did two wounds to the captain....who then failed BOTH 2+ armour saves.
I would have lost the combat if i had not rolled up the warlord trait giving my warlord +1 to combat resolutions.

So we draw combat and we move into Jame's last turn, some shooting goes off but not a lot changes and we get back to the combat that will determine the game.
My captain makes three attacks and takes only one more wolfgaurd down and suddenly I'm praying for an extra turn.
Unfortunantly, in response the wolfguard manage another wound on the captain and....as became typical for him....he failed his third 2+ save.

He dies, James picks up 2vp and slay the warlord popping him on 3 points.
I fail to roll for another turn and the game ends with me holding only one objective and having first blood.

Three points each, complete draw!

Was a great game however and I had loads of fun watching my captain get mauled haha.


Game 3-

This was a quick game for me as I got matched against arguably the worst list I could.

With about half my points tied up into my spartan, going up against Andrew Ingram's Dark Eldar list with 12 dark lances and a few blasters was as bad as it could get. I picked a mission but it turned out to be irrelevant by the end.

I got first turn and unloaded into one of his Ravagers, only for him to make every save. I was cautiously optimistic about the spartan weathering a turn of fire to get in and pop a few Deldar vehicles in return.

First return shot at me....hits....pens....explodes.

375pts of Spartan detonates leaving the occupants in the middle of no cover.

Long story short, I was tabled turn two, giving me another major loss.


I will admit, I was a little distressed watching the spartan blow up turn 1 and I had begun to notice a pattern. Everything to do with my spartan was having bad luck.
Imobilised immediately first game, admittedly shot well second game, but cursed its sole occupant to fail three 2+ saves in a row, then going boom in game three.

Annoyingly, as I started to piece this together, I was kicked when I was down.

Mitch Hargreaves approached me (he had brought the spartan to the event for me as he picked it up from my friend dale's house that morning) and gave me a shocking revelation.
Leaving the spartan at Dale's the night before had been a terrible mistake as dale is a professing Word Bearers player and we have an active rivalry between our two forces.

During the night, Dale had kindly decided to add some "Freehand' to the interior of my majestic tank.

Even for the non-superstitious, this single, horrifying act of treachery had obvious effects on the spartan!

Soon word got out and pretty much half the hall was having a good laugh at my expense and asking to see.
I will admit, as traitorous as it was, I still had a great chuckle and it was genuinely funny.


Game 4-
This game I was against Adam Pavey and his Eldar.

This was Adam's first Force Z and it seemed like he had a great time. This was a fun game that also ended up turning into a stalemate.

Adam's farseer had rolled up invisibility and I had not even heard of this power before this moment. Immediately I realise the threat and I decided I would have to focus the farseer down before he could cast it.
I ended up with second turn, but Adam had placed his farseer in a waveserpent buying me some time to try and deal with it.

My Spartan failed to kill the serpent (in fact, took the whole game to blow up a single fire prism, which amusingly was the only unit that died this whole game) and Adam disembarked in his next tur and managed to cast Invis every turn from then on.

I charged the farseer and the unit of guardians he was with with ten tacticals and my captain, offering a challenge in the process.
With the relic blade I would instant kill the farseer with even just a single wound so It was my best shot.
I had chosen the Warlord mission meaning that doing so would net me five victory points, I found out on turn three (the same turn we started close combat) that Adam's mission was the same and the fate of the combat would decide the game.

However, my saves were phenomenal this game, with the non-engaged tactical squad weathering five turns of fire from a wave serpent, fire prism and crimson hunter.
The Engaged units didn't lose even a single wound in three game turns (so SIX rounds of combat) either and I was managing to kill a guardian every turn. My hope was that the pesky Eldar would break, letting me run them down but they passed every morale check and held firm.
Turn 5 ended and no more turns rolled up and it was another complete draw, though well deserved in my opinion.

Lessons learned from this game is that Invisibility is AMAZING.

Great game Adam, you were a pleasure to play against and I hope you had fun!


Game 5-
I went up against Mark's Dark Angels in this round and there's really not much to say.
Mark had brought an imperial knight that made absolute mine meat of my tacticals and removed my Spartan in close combat.

At least they looked cool doing it.

His other troops didn't see much in this game and the Knight was the star of the show.

Long story short, I was tabled turn three, giving me another major loss.



FINAL THOUGHTS

So I ended up not winning a single game this Force Z, which isn't uncommon for me (I've won a fair few wooden spoons) but I still had a blast of a day. It was worth the time and money it took to make the trip hands down and while I wont be able to attend Force Z in October, I'm pushing the missus for a gold ViP pass for next year.

These were my first Seventh Ed games and it really felt the same as 6th, and I actually liked the new Psychic phase and I will be taking a Psyker next time, at the very least for the extra warp charges.

The armies in attendance were pretty awesome and I saw quite a few worthy forces but Tim Stephens' (another #To40kG participant) Imperial Guard looked fantastic and he picked up players choice as a result.

Well Deserved!

To wrap things up, the long anticipated (probably not) painting tutorial will pop up sometime this week and I'll likely use that to tie off the "rapid" updates so that, going forward, I can shift to a weekly update schedule with smaller posts probably cropping up in between when I feel like I have something interesting to post.
I'm very VERY keen to keep posting, and will probably continue to use the #To40kG tag to do so when building up this army, however, it'll be a little while before I'll have anything new to show since I don't have any more models in bound just yet.

However, keep checking back as I'll have some other hobby stuff to show in the comming days!

The Full force I took to Force Z

Thanks again to Alpha Hobbies for another great event!

Tale of 40K Gamers -REDUX- Part 6: Nearly Done & a Large Ramble

Alrighty, Day 6! (It's after, 11:59pm so technically I'm late)

So, I managed to do ALL the trim on my tacticals (will likely do another coat gold though), the whites on all their shoulder tassels (can't think of a better name), paint all their lenses red (layers to come) and tidy up the mistakes I had made on their armour.

Tale of 40K Gamers -REDUX- Part 5:

Another day, another update!

Today I learned a valuable lesson about my hobby. Good music and a Beer makes painting an absolute dream!

Tale of 40K Gamers -REDUX- Part 4:

Excuse my poor photo and this meager post today!

Turns out staying up until 6:30 to watch the new episode of Doctor Who was a poor idea when i could have just slept and risen early. Coupled with the demands of parenting a three year old, my hobby progress today has been poor!

Tale of 40K Gamers -REDUX- Part 3:

A quick, late night update for today, mainly because I'm stuck into painting and want to get as much done before the new season of Doctor Who starts tonight.

All my Marines are now base coated in the best blues and have had their silvers painted. The next step will be painting the golds followed by shading, detailing and weathering, all in all, I'm darn confident I can see this through before Force Z!

Tale of 40K Gamers -REDUX- Part 2:

So, day two, time for a second update!

Having free time to hobby really does make a big difference to your inspiration I must say!
I stayed up late last night acting like a servitor, getting some prep work done on the work to come, I undercoated, airbrushed and painted all my bases, did some more assembly work and started work on some test models!

Tale of 40K Gamers -REDUX- Part 1: Marines

Well, as is probably common knowledge by now to those who know me, I can be exceedingly unreliable when it comes to hobby.

When I started this challenge, I intended to see it through, to paint and blog every week about my burgeoning Chaos Warband. However, real-life (or should I blame it on the Warp?) had other ideas and a mixture of business and subsequent lack of drive (also, 400km distance between you and your hobby materials for half the challenge doesn't help) has made me more or led me off the path.

That said, with Force Z #3 rapidly approaching and a solid green light from the Dragon (...I mean wife), I've managed to clear up the remaining 8 days til Force Z to smash through an army.

What this means is, for the next 8 days, I will be hobbying and blogging the progress of this EVERY DAY until Force Z.
HOWEVER, since this leaves me minimal time (as well as funding) to source the rest of the Chaos force I had planned, I've sought and recieved permission from the venerable Adam Nordberg to swap my hobby attention to Loyalist Marines.

Now this will come with a slight twist. Since I lack plastic 40k miniatures to complete this project I will instead be using some Forgeworld minis that have been sitting around my hobby den for half a year now that, as it turns out, has me able to make a force almost exactly 750pts (a little more if i added a full command squad).

So, to kick things off, the list I'm running currently looks like so.


Captain Cyprian
Artificer Armour, Relic Blade

Tactical Squad (10 Man)
Veteran Sergeant

Tactical Squad (10 Man)
Veteran Sergeant

Spartan Assault Tank
Quad-Lascannons, Armoured Ceremite


A nice round 750pts. I may drop the vet sergeants for some special weapons yet though.



As a final Hurrah, here's a progress pic to whet the appetites.

Until Tomorrow!

A TALE OF 4 GAMERS: WEEK 1 – T5, 3+ and FNP

Howdy all!

So , here we are with week 1's post for the tale of 40k gamers, the proverbial calm before the (painting) storm to come!
Firstly I'd like to say thank you for the opportunity to be a part of this challenge. This is something I've always wanted to do, so I'm super excited to kick this show into gear!

Come the Apocalypse! -Pt.1

"There is only one constant in this galaxy and that is change. The wise adapt."


So here I am with yet another "ongoing" project introduction.
I continue work on my imperial forces in my continued efforts to have a fully painted army within the next few months as my last blog entry described, though this is where my workload appears to have grown far beyond what I had imagined prior.

The rouge Dark Angel, Chyper, along with a handful of fallen, has been reported operating in cohesion with one of the Tau I'sia sept's 3rd Sphere Coalitions penetrating ever deeper into the Imperial worlds that border the Tau empire.
Without hesitation, once it became known, the Dark Angels chapter began to move and, even now it is preparing to mobilise almost the entire chapter in the hope of finishing their score with Cypher. Despite an entire Tau expansion fleet between them and their target, they will stop at nothing, leave no ancient warmachine un-powered and no lost hero un-awoken to achieve this goal.

At the best astropathic projections, the Dark Angels will be able to cross the void and engage their long hated foe in a mere 9 months.



What does this all mean?
What this means is that Adam Wiseman (check his blog here), friend, rabid hobbyist and Dark Angels fanatic has challenged me, creator of the Tau I'sia sept, to a monumental, 15,000pt Apocalypse game, scheduled for around the start of the new year.
The goal here is for us to build and paint these whopping forces, recording the details and progress on our respective blogs and, finally, square off in a densely urban battlefield to determine whether the Dark Angels eliminate Cypher and blunt a Tau expansion to boot...or completely cripple the chapter for centuries.

Originally we were planning to play a 10,000pt game at some point this year, however, after a few recent acquisitions (details to come later), it was put forward that we should look bigger and aim for the stars (and blow a few up while we're at it)> Adding Cypher to my Tau forces gave us a little flavour to the conflict and help justify why almost a whole chapter of marines was engaging my Tau on a fringe world with no imperial support.



Lucky for me I have a good, 7000ish point jumping point of assembled (but largely unpainted :S) models. In 9 months I'm going to be striving to push my limits of painting and expand my beloved Tau into a fully fledged army worthy of some glamour and gallery shots.
It also means this will combine my (totally never updated) planned Tau progress blogs.

So, now that this is up...I have some fire warriors to paint!

~Felix

Slow Grow Campaign - Introduction

First off....WOW...It's been a long time since I've posted on this blog!
The biggest bummer about this is that, while my posting hasn't been been good, my painting HAS.
The past few months has seen my hobby skill increase by leaps and bounds and sadly, the main purpose of this blog was to record said growth!

I guess I'll have to make some catchup posts!



But anyways, the subject of today's post is for me to introduce a series of posts that I should hopefully be making on a regular basis.

The Fall of Segmentum Pacificus

As part of striving to improve my hobby skills, I joined with a group of fellow hobbyists to do a 6 month long, slow grow campaign, which, for those who are unaware, means that every month for six months, I will buy and paint models to an increasing points limit until finally ending with 1750pts worth of painted models.

The primary goal of the campaign is to get the players to build and paint a new army and have something to be proud of at the end.

To encourage players to actively get their hobby on, the campaign enforces penalties on players who have too many unpainted models in their armies, which is bad, since in the campaign, winning games gives experience to your warlord who will use that experience to gain permanent stat increases for the duration of the campaign.

To confess, the campaign started last month, with a modest 400pt army list limit and I took this opportunity to secure a Cadian Battleforce and start a gaurd army. My 400pts of Gaurd are largely painted already and in my incredible wisdom (sarcasm) I forgot to take many images during the whole process.
SO, what I WILL be doing, is finishing off my 400pts and taking a finished product shot! Then, seeing as this is the second month, I am looking at how to expand my Gaurd up to this months 750pt cap. THIS bunch of models I will indeed be photographing and adding to the blog and will, hopefully, continue to do so as the campaign rolls on.

With any luck and perseverance, this blog will catalouge my path to having my first...EVER....completely painted table top army!

Keep an eye on this blog, I WILL be posting again here soon!

-Felix