Drop and Engage

 

With the anti-air guns silenced the traitors knew it wouldn’t be long before reinforcements

arrived. Teams falling back regrouped at key locations. Hastily shoring up defensible

positions along the sub-routes the traitors dug in and waited. If the Imperials wanted to

push forwards they would have to go through hell.

Mission two in this campaign was called “Drop and engage”. This mission required the

Offence(Jamie) the momentous task of flushing out the Traitors from the strongholds on

each of the flanks. It's been two weeks since we played this game and all I remember is

my Melta gunner and Jamies Precursor having a shoot off point blank range at the end.

Its worth noting that Jamie had the option to charge and fight but chose a more honorable

approach, not leveraging his superior advantage against his opponent. After multiple

failures the Melta gunner finally hit his mark. Victory for the traitors.

Thursday Night Kill Team

 Airborne Assault

The traitors had crudely constructed 90mm long range cannons in concealed pits amongst

the ruins of the city. Repurposed fortification weapons hastily welded into anti-air defenses.

The archenemy had revealed their makeshift firepower all at once in the sector as Imperial

landers attempted to abort drop insertion in the neighboring sector. Many troops lives were

saved thanks to quick reactions from escort fighter but not all landers made it back to orbit.

Now understanding the archenemies forces had never actually retreated from the sector like

intelligence had believed, plans were quickly made to disable enemy air defenses.

Jamie and I agreed to play a narrative Kill Team campaign using the Airborne Assault mission

pack from the Hivestorm book. The first mission saw his Tempestus Aquilions drop from up

high with one goal, destroy the traitors anti-air guns. I am using my Blooded and it was my

job to disable any bombs that were planted at any of two locations in the mid-field. 

Turning point 1 saw both the Aquilions and Blooded set up forward positions. At the end of

turning point 1 and start of turning point 2 saw Jamie's Aquilions make great use of smoke

grenades to obscure troopers that had less than ideal cover from the traitors positioned up

on vantage. With both teams trading well in combat, victory would only be awarded to the

Aquilions if they managed to set a bomb. And before the end of turning point 2 they did

just that, setting a timer on the traitors to diffuse the rapidly escalating situation. At the

start of turning point 3 the timer was set to 9 activations, 5 for Jamie and 4 for me. During

Turning point 3 I saw an opportunity to charge my Flenser into combat with two Aquilion,

this was a misplay and didn’t further my goal of diffusing the bomb but didn’t actually cost

me the game. Jamie's clever use of the Drop and Secure strategy ploy as well as bringing his

Grenadier forward to reinforce the bomb location sealed his victory. This game was an

absolute blast in more ways than one!

Magic Mates 2

On the last day of May 2020 four super friends gathered around a blue pool table in a single garage in Martinborough to fight over who would receive the title of champion. The game was Magic the gathering and this would be the second time the title was up for grabs.

The first time this happened was back in January of 2020 and when we dreamt up this series of games we had no idea it would happen as often as it has. January saw Troy claim the first title of Champion. He has been a long time friend of mine and helped me learn the game (and learn the game himself) a few years ago when we decided we were going to dive into this trading card game. From 2016 till today we have had many games of magic over his dining room table. He secured the win for the first series with an epic play that I won’t soon forget. Troys timely play of the card Teferi’s Protection as I was about to destroy him in the final game in Jan saw me take dead last as I swung in with too many creatures to protect myself the following turn. I didn’t see this coming. I knew my mistake was over confidence but it was too late.

“No plan survives first contact with the enemy” - Graf Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke

Paul, Troy and Neil had carefully constructed new decks since Jan with completely different strategies. Paul came in with an Artifact heavy deck which synergized well with his Planeswalker commander Sahelli to create colourless mana batteries in which to ramp up to the late game. He used the infect mechanic to threaten our health pools should we leave ourselves open to attack. I feel like he could have utilized infect greater in the mid game with mono red cards that pumped up his infect creatures and gave them menace or double strike (or both). Neil used an Esper deck with heavy life replenishment that saw his life total get well into the 50’s before any of us were in a position to reduce it. Neils deck lacked enough Flyers to stop me taking command of the combat phase but had sweet shenanigans in the form of tutoring our Sorin and other things that straight reduced a players life to 10. His deck had great synergy, it will be hard for him to figure out where his deck failed him I suspect. I think it may have had something to do with the fact that Neils big plays could be and were used against him which also happened in the first series. Troy brought a homebrewed Golgari deck centered around big creatures with great late game application and big credit to him for bringing something he’d put together from his own collection. It was well known to all of us that nobody was going to win the competition twice in a row so Troy was target number one. If there was ever a better time to bring a deck you weren’t 100% sure about then this was it. I had spent around $200 on singles to improve my five colour Dragon tribal deck and I’m happy to say it produced some satisfying results. It wasn’t over powered but once it gets going it's very hard to stop. My 5 colour deck worked well and I have Peter at Calico Keep in Paraparaumu to thank for sitting down and helping me construct it. As with the first series the decider came in the fifth match. This was the game my deck really showed me (and the others) what it could do. The sky above was darkened with monstrous Dragons and the title was within reach. All I had to do was to choose who died first and who died last.

October update

I haven't been sticking to my plan of updating weekly but its better late than never they say. I haven't had much progress in the painting department with only two units built and primed, one unit of 10 grots and a unit of bullgryn that will be used for retinue characters for our ongoing quest through the Blackstone Fortress. I've had the good fortune of plenty of stellar war games since my last update with the clubs narrative campaign coming to a conclusion which I will talk about later in this post as well as introducing my girlfriend Kat to Kill team. My Ork warband is still my priority on my hobby desk and I want to finish a handful of models that most people would consider trash. I decided to make up what I could of the bits and pieces of a second hand purchase I brought early 2018 and made up twelve Boyz, two Burnaz and three Lootaz. These models look terrible but I really don't mind. Why paint the best models first when my painting skills are still developing? My goal is to complete one unit of Orks a month starting with the Boyz and Grotz.

Blackstone Fortress
This game has been great for drawing me back into tabletop gaming on a few different levels. My partner Kat has always loved board games and has a closet full of them stacked as high as a mans is tall and was just as eager as I was to delve into the Blackstone fortress and see what awaits our team of desperate opportunists in arguably the most grim of fictional universes. With our latest journey having ended with discovering what's inside the Hidden Vault we have plenty more adventures ahead. I have set myself the goal of painting to completion one Explorer and one unit of hostiles each month until finished.

Kill team.
My girlfriend Kat randomly suggested I show her how to play Kill team this long weekend which I jumped at. We played the game at its most simple level. Two teams of seven Cultist including one Leader, two gunners and four with Autoguns. It wasn't a mirror match as our teams leaders were armed differently and one team had a grenade launcher and the other a flamer. We played the basic mission Covert war and rotated the different primary objectives. The series was a draw with each of us winning one game and one game drawn. Kat had fun and picked up the game quickly. I hope to gradually add complexity to the future games like the use of specialists and command points. The simplicity of these introductory games really appealed to me and I put that down to my time spent playing computer games that don't throw you in the deep end but rather have you unlock the options along the way. I've always loved basic troops in the 40k universe and I love to put them to use and see what they're capable of.
I had been thinking of all the teams I could make up with my existing models and which teams could be created in the future with a bit of converting and background flavour, namely the Blackstone explorers. I finished reading the Blackstone fortress novel by Darius Hicks last month which named a few characters who aren't included in the board game. Janis Draik didn't come to the Blackstone fortress alone and Kill team is a great way to create these characters and include them in narrative driven games. I would like to have a team of House Draik guards accompany him. Theres also two other teams that would be fun to make from Warhammer quest, two Religious groups with Daedalosus, UR-025 and X-101 in an AD Mech team and
Taddeous, Pious Vorne and Gotfret de Montbard in another.

WAAAGH!
Fellow club member Scott put together and ran a narrative campaign over three club days and it was a hell of a lot of fun for me. These were my first games of 40k in twenty years. Each player fielded 1000 points with the battle line drawn between the Imperium against Chaos and Xeno. My Blood Axe warband got to go up against Imperial Fists in game one, Cadians in game two, Grey Knights and Black Templar in game three and Imperial Fists/Space Wolves with the grand finale being a 2v2 with my ally Simon playing Tyranids. These matches taught me the value of piggy backing leadership off other Ork units and the power of Da Jump. I managed to table Scotts Imperial Fists in game one but that wouldn't be the case now that the IF Codex supplement has been printed. Ignoring cover is a soft counter to my Blood axe Klan Kulture. Also Scott had one eye on our game and his other on the other tables as he was running the series and answering questions which may have been why he still had 5 command points left at the end of our match up... maybe. Game two against Alexs' Cadians and he could have easily taken the victory had he remembered to evacuate one more unit off the board which was how he scored victory points in that game. The mission favoured my warband in that particular game but I only won the game narrowly. Game three was the closest against Connors force of Grey Knights and Black Templar. Glory was to be had as my Orks ignored holding the hidden objective and crashed into the space marines. With the battlefield littered in still warm dead the final fight was between Connors wounded Dread-Knight and a handful of Orks, one of which had a Power Klaw that landed the killing blow on the Dread-Knight giving the Orks the win. The final match taught me the power of the Wulfen as my Orks teamed up with Simons Tyranids in an attempt to beat down the Imperium once again. A Tsunami of Orks and Tyranids surged up open ground and were picked off by the dozens turn after turn by Scott's Imperial fist that held fortified positions (but not his Predator tank). My Weirdboy used Da Jump to slingshot unit after unit at the Imperial front line which held strong. Tom's Wulfen appeared, slew a unit of Grots, then an unit of Boyz then a unit of Nobz and finally a Warboss. They just wouldn't die, and when they did die more Orkz died with them.
I'm pretty fortunate to have group of fun guys to play locally. The only disappointment came from me having a half painted army.

September Project Orks

What is a "Main army"? Is it the army you play the most or its it the biggest army in your collection? I got back into 40k in 2017 when Indexes were what most people drew their armies from and took home the Dark Imperium box set. My Death Guard force has grown three fold since then but have taken a back seat to my Orks so far and haven't seen a game.

My Orks are my first priority and while horde armies can be a pain to complete and play sometimes with how many models are being moved around constantly, they have been an absolute blasts to play with. My first project is a fair way away from completion at this point with 140 Standard Ork boyz, 90 Grots and about 50 other models requiring attention. I'm not a fast painter and finding motivation during the week is hard but will be key to finishing. About half my Orks are 2nd hand rescues which is perfect for learning my own painting techniques.

This blog is being used as a tool to help me finish these projects related to fantasy, historical and down right silly table top gaming. I aim to update weekly with painting progress, terrain projects, battle summaries, narrative stories and maybe a few tactics posts.