Back to Basics

Hi everyone,

I haven't anything new to show off, but it still is a bit of a special post, as me and a friend played our first 40k game in more than a decade.
For us as a group we held up and kept buying the books until 4th edition.
While I have rather fond memories of 4th edition, with the best Chaos codex to this date, we decided not to make the jump to 5th edition.
Personally I like skirmish games and with the start of 3th edition, 40k was getting more and more detached from the games I actually wanted to play (the same happened with Privateer Press afterwards as well though, despite their famous statement about using metal miniatures in the mk1 rulebook and the fact it started out as a skirmish game).

As a Chaos player I hated GW for their jump to 3th edition, leaving me without a usable army and having to tear off the arms of many of my figures.
These were different times, money was scarce and every investment made had to count.
Which was the reason I made some stupid purchases (like Abaddon or a Bloodthirster), just because they costed a lot of points.
Only to see them put out of use by a graviton gun or shot back to the warp on the turn he was summoned.
As much as I like the ruleset of the 2nd edition, the imbalance between the different lists was a big issue. Especially as my regular opponents were Space Marines, who were GW's sweet spot at the time.
The Chaos codex, while pretty, was also a mismatch of different kinds of units. More suited for a Black crusade than a themed legion army.
It's like they thought a mix of the Warhammer Chaos Warriors army book and the space marines codex was the way to go. 
True, there are some strong individual characters, but they cost a lot of points and are far too easily dispatched.
My biggest issue is that they don't feel like Chaos marines should, they don't fit in with the stories and look more comical than the biggest threat the Imperium is facing.
It wasn't until 4th edition until they got this right, with usable daemon princes you could create yourself, raptors, veteran skills, daemon weapons, the first daemon engine, ... It was also the codex which showed how the Chaos Marines were masters of their domains and enslaved the lesser daemons within.
In 2nd edition there isn't even a good way to get into Hand to Hand, something they should excel  at, without clinging to cover, picking a Nurgle or Khorne force or loosing half of your army.
And why do Imperial Guard veterans get all these skills, but not the far older and far more experienced veterans of both Space and Chaos Space Marines?
Anyway, I'm rambling. The point is that I actually prefer the 2nd edition ruleset, but like the later edition codexes that much better.

Earlier this year we discussed the idea to get back into 2nd edition.
When Modhail jumped on the wagon he expressed the fact he likes the Badab War very much and as I think this is an interesting part of the 40k history as well we are currently working on a campaign.

Yesterday, me and Bram wanted to test out the rules again and the game went exactly as I remember them from games all those years ago.
It's was a small game with only 500pts a side on a 2' x 2' surface, Wordbearers vs Carcharodons.

Turn 1, naturally I lost the roll for deployment (Strategy rating 3 vs 5).
Carcharodons took first turn, moved their units and shot at my rhino with my whole force on board.
The multimelta ripped through the hull, destroying all except my champion, a Chaos space marine and the crew. But as it is a template weapon, two more hits on the tracks needed to be worked out, throwing the rhino from left to right on the battlefield, leaving only a single crew-member standing.
....

The first shot of the game, ...
True, I could have put my rhino into cover (or not have taken a rhino at all), but I needed to get into combat as my force was mostly equiped with assault weapons. Also, in 2nd edition you need to pick up pace with your vehicles and turning with them also isn't that easy. I could have picked a force with more firepower, but most of the time this doesn't work well with Chaos Marines as they don't have that many options and with a large template I doubt they would have lasted much longer against the multimelta. The survivors could have gone on overwatch though, ... if they didn't break.

 After this blow I decided to make the best of it. At first my sole survivor fled into cover, but rallied over there. Meanwhile the Cacharadons marched across the field.
My first idea was to make it into the buidling at the left, but I had already run out of time.

In the end I decided to snapshot the techmarine, but got charged in return and butchered with the rest of the small Carchardons force watching.
Sigh

 

I'll try to get my Astral Claws ready for the next battle.

 

This was actually my first game on my recently bought foldable 6' x 4' table from Gamemat.eu (http://www.gamemat.eu/sk/)
While I'm not one to promote things on my blog I'm very satisfied by it, as it is quite easy to use and can withstand quite some force. We used it for RPG's in the past and it has been pushed, leaned on and loaded with books without problem.  The table is a great solution to safe space compared to my three battleboards.

 Thanks for reading!
Until next time, hopefully with some painted marines.

Enjoy New Years eve everyone and a HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 

Back from the dead

Well, not really. But I've been neglecting this blog for about a year.
So I might as well have been.

It's been one year with a lot of ups and downs.
In February my youngest son got seriously ill without a known cause and had very high fevers.
Luckily he got stronger over the year and he's gotten very resilient.
July was another month with a large impact on  my hobby time as I got a promotion at work.
While I'm still happy with it and give it my all, it leaves me with less hobby time than before.
However, the main reason I stopped blogging is the fact I got seriously disappointed in my own painting skills.
This left my hobby in a state total chaos during March and April, where I started a multitude of project and failed to finish even one of them.
My painting is getting slow and sloppy and I'm not making any progress at all skillwise, which I find highly frustrating. The result is I'm not painting much right now and there are often long periods of inactivity between short bursts of painting frenzy.

My first burst was in June, when I discovered the Battle Fleet Gothic computer game.
Almost at the same time one of the Bloggers (Modhail) I'm following showed off his painted Eldar fleet. Before I even realized it I had challenged him to a game.
 Also, turns out he lives not that far away over the border.
I frantically started searching for the rules and miniatures I hadn't touched in more than a decade and was very pleased to notice I had even more miniatures than I remembered.
Some were unfinished though and most of them needed some touching up.
With a deadline (the game) to work towards I repainted some parts I didn't like and finished some of the ships. At the time I last played there was no Armada, so I modelled my rather large unfinished kroozers in battleships.
At the moment there are still a lot of unpainted ships on my desk. But I hope to finish these whenever I feel like painting.
The rest isn't that well painted, but as I was in a rush I didn't strip the paint on them but simply repainted some parts of them to make them more Deathskull.

 This is my Hammer class Battlekroozer, which was an unfinished Kill Kroozer conversion.

 And the Deathdeala, made from a terror kroozer conversion I once started.

 

We played a few games and I must admit it was a bit of a learning experience as Orks aren't the easiest race to play with. But I won a few games and I will remember the battle where my Deathdeala rammed and boarded an Imperial Emperor class battleship (with a result of 5 to 35), breaking the thing almost in two and annihilating the crew, fondly for a long time.

It was also a very pleasant meeting and we decided to play some more games together.



 

Another game me and my regular opponent Bram picked up again was Briskars.

I've had a hard time with the started set before and I did again in the game I played; so it was time for some expansions. They have yet to see the field of batlle though.

During our games I really felt I needed some more long distance weapons as the starter set is focussed on three melee fighters. Hence I painted up some sturdy artillery members of the Outcatst faction, which will hopefully give me an edge next time we play the game.

 

This birgus royal (which is the name of the crab-people) is actually an artillery piece also, as he can hurl melee fighters into combat or enemy figures away from him).

And this birgus was the last unpainted member of the starter set. I don't think this is the best of sculpts, but he's a useful member with his long range melee weapon.
Normally he stands on four legs, but as this leaves a huge gap between his front and hind legs I gave him an extra set. Another reason is the fact the birgus royal does have six legs and they are the same species, as well as the fact he is pictured with six legs on the cover of the rulebook.

 

Last but not least I painted some Wasteman miniatures as I mean to play the game with my oldest son. He's only six, but interested and the game itself is rather simple.

The Wasteman miniatures were a bit rough, but after a bit of cleaning up I think they look okay, though I should have given them a matt varnish.

My first idea was to get theme in, which was to be 'flags of around the world'. This didn't work well on the nurse though, so I dropped the idea.

 

 This guy also has a Ghoul T-shirt in the official scheme which I liked a lot.
Remembering the fact there are also ghouls in Fall Out, I gave him a ghoulish appearance.
Funny enough he is one of the few members of the group without the cannibal skill.

 The nurse with the bronzed skin. Don't trust her though, she's a cannibal as well.

This guy I struggled the hardest with as I had no idea how to paint him. There are so many different kind of materials and surfaces it makes it hard for everything to match up. In the end I decided to go for a bit of a Yin-Yan effect with a 'Hello Kitty' apron and a 'Devil's best man' T-shirt.

 

 

With the possibility of me and my family moving to Australia en 2017 I started cleaning up my collection and I've already sold a lot of stuff I don't plan on using anymore or haven't used at all.

Among these is my Blood Bowl teams and game. The game and a few teams have already been sold, but my converted lizardmen team and some other mini's needed some finishing touches first, which is why I painted these fellows:

 

 

That's it for this post.

Happy holidays everyone, starting with a merry Christmas!