My Day at Salute 2015

I think it is safe to say that Salute has become the premier wargame show in the UK. I have being going to it since Kensington Town Hall was the venue back in the eighties. And with most years since that time the numbers attending seem to increase. Queuing has always been a fundamental part of the experience and this year was no exception. Due to my usual lack of planning I had left my on-line ticket purchase too late and had to buy a £15 ticket on the day (rather than the £10 on-line cost). However, standing in the 'more money than sense' queue did allow me to see the queue busters queue rapidly lose patience with the organises plan for gradual admittance. At roughly 23 minutes past 10.00am the organised lines decided they had had enough and all remaining people in the queue just made a beeline for the entrance. No harm done as far as I could see, but perhaps more planning next year is required.

People. These on the left, not bored by having to queue to get into Salute, were now queuing for Forgeworld

Kill Team/Combat Squad - Short and Sweet

Kill Team/Combat Squad 40K games are new to me. Two club mates invited to take part in a 350 point game. I won't go into details on the rules, but the major change to a traditional game is that models act as individuals rather than in squads or platoons.

I decided to take a selection of my work-in-progress Harlequins. I took two troupes with a Starweaver fast skimmer transport for one, and the other was accompanied by a Shadowseer.

Harlequins doing their best to be inconspicuous

We managed two games during the evening, the first featuring one moveable relic objective (which needed to be taken off from your own table edge) in the middle of the table, and the second, featured three standard objectives whose final position was set by using the scatter dice. My opponents took two very different forces; one with 20 Dark Angel Space Marine Veterans (Kanan) with a selection of special a close combat weapons, the second a Adeptus Mechanicus force (Dave G.) based on a Inquisition henchman force with numbers on their side, and the occasional heavy weapon and specialist, such as Death Cult Assassins.

Above: The Mechanicum hordes

The Bridge of Sighs - A Maelstrom Battle Report

So Dave R. Agreed to come over for a Maelstrom game of 1850 points. He took his Iyanden Eldar army (which has won a painting trophy at a local tournament in West London in the past) and I took my trusty Iron Hands. We decided to have a game on an unconventional table.

The big bridge

The Small Bridge

Infinity The Game - A Learning Experience

So Tuesday night was club night. And Mike (MegaMike) managed to drag himself away from his beloved DZC and agreed to have a go at Infinity, a particular favourite of mine.

Infinity is a skirmish game set in the future (Manga inspired), which benefits from a lot of scenery, in comparison with a 40K battlefield, and only requires 10 or so figures per side to play.

My fondness for Infinity is based on a number of reasons. The overall look of the game is very appealing and the models are very pretty. I like a tabletop that is interesting to look at, and Infinity game play certainly benefits from lots of terrain, be it buildings with plenty of roof access or scatter terrain to hide behind. I also enjoy the ability of the game to tell a story and for individual models to take on a character of their own. And to just round things off, the fluff and the artwork contained within the lavish rule books is superb.

Panoceania - Knight of Santiago to the fore

However, for beginners there are a couple of elephants in the room that need to be considered. 

Back in the Day: Why is my Hobby Wargaming?

I started this blog almost a month ago, and I continue to be pleasantly surprised how much it has encouraged me in a hobby that I was already very enthusiastic about. A friend told me, with a smile on her face, that blogging was just an attempt to validate my own existence (a bit dark I thought). There might be some truth to this, but I would like to think it also disciplines me to carry through with projects I start (always a problem for me) and I would like to hope that people are interested and/or inspired by what I present. Another positive for me personally is that I have seen an improvement in my own writing ability (if not my spelling).

So why wargaming? When I was 10 years of age (in the early 1980's) my uncle took me to Earl's Court in London to a model exhibition. I vividly remember seeing, and being engrossed by, a WWII Pacific wargame being demonstrated based on a the U.S. Marines landing on a Japanese held beach. The wargame was being played on a sand table, and I particularly remember being told how the Americans had shot down one of their own planes because it had failed to respond to the F.O.F. (Friend or Foe) radio message (a D6 roll of 1 no doubt).

My first, and favourite Wargaming book

There isn't any aspect of the hobby that I don't enjoy. Painting, model making, scratchbuilding, admiring other people's work, tournaments, the social aspect, meeting new opponents and old friends, playing competitive games or fluffy games. The only thing that has escaped me so far is campaign based games, but only because I have done so little of this.

Above: From my collection - The first Citadel Space Marines painted as Crimson Fists.

My first wargame was played on my Uncle's patio with WWII 1/72 plastic model kits from a toy shop. Living in west London, I remember a few shops where you could buy toy soldiers in London, Gamers in Exile - near King's Cross. A shop in Kensington - where they had cardboard boxes full of metal Napoleonic figures. A shop in Kingston - where I first became aware of Gamesworkshop and Citadel Minatures. There was also Ork's Nest - still going strong in Central London. And, my favourite of all, the original Gamesworkshop store in Hammersmith, where I can proudly say I played a Warhammer Fantasy Game, my Skaven against Undead.

Drop Zone Commander - Ruins: All Very Distressing

So one of the strategies in Drop Zone Commander to help you achieve the victory conditions is to target buildings, to either, injure enemy models contained within, to reduce the enermy's opportunities for collecting objectives and intel, to open up fire lanes to give more opportunities in target selection, and finally, and most amusingly, to bring down a building on the enemy's sorry arse.

However, the cardboard buildings available in the game do not offer any options in how you represent destroyed buildings on the tabletop. So being a Wargame terrain geek I decided to see what modelling possibilities existed. My own club have decided to build 1 inch high blocks of polystyrene with the same footprint as the DZC buildings with appropriate texture added and painted grey to represent the collapse.

I took a different approach and considered what the cardboard buildings could offer in a quick and easy approach. Below are my photographs to illustrate.

1. Take an unmade building and with scissors cut the bottom inch away from the main body. Please note that you will need to measure this as the inch is less than the height indicated as the height of the ground floor windows.

2. Make the top half of the building as usual, and in addition glue tabs to the inside of the top so that it can sit snugly on the bottom half. Job done.

The Inconsistant Gods of Chaos - A Maelstrom 40K Game Battle Report

Tuesday night at the club brought me a game with Dave G. Dave's Chaos Space Marines against my Iron Hands in a 1750pts maelstrom game. Unfortunately, the club had a later start than usual so we started the game knowing that we were unlikely to get through to the end. However, Dave and I have history from previous games, in that we have a really good giggle, and our levels of competency are equally matched, (Dave, I think you will agree I am being very kind. I will not tell the readers that it wasn't until turn two that we realised we had not rolled our warlord traits.........doh!).

I have played two previous maelstrom games, and what I have leant is you will need to play quite a few games before you can judge it's worth. The objective cards randomly selected at the begining of each of your turns add something different to each game and I really enjoy the narrative aspect they add. However, you need an opponent who doesn't frequent the competitive end of wargaming as the cards can frustrate and endlessly annoy you. The cards can be your best friend or your worst enemy. You need a few of these games under your belt and over time these should equal out the luck.

Dave had brought Chaos Space Marines (Iron Warriors) but include a Hell Brute formation, a Chaos Deamon (Warlord), Chaos Spawn and two, yes count them, two Helldrakes (the bane of every right thinking Space Marine). Two 'normal' Chaos Space Marine units, a Chaos Sorcerer, the obligatory two Chaos Cultist units, and two big guns from Stronghold Assault (Wall of MartyrsVengeance Weapon Battery) completed the army.

My Iron Hands feature a Chapter Master on a bike with the Gorgon's Chain and a Thunder Hammer, a unit of bikes with a full complement of Grav weapons, two Tactical Squads, two Scout Squads in Land Speeder Storms, a Thunderfire Cannon, a Stormtalon, three Scout Bikers and a five man Terminator Assault Squad.

I don't intend to give a blow by blow account of the game, but instead, focus on the main points of interest and pivotal moments. Also included below are a few photographs. The scenery is from my own collection, and is a mixture of Warhammer Fantasy and Lord of the Rings pieces.

I cannot lie, the luck gods were on my side in this game. I got the first turn and my first three cards were objectives very close to my troops, and so were the three objective cards I received at the start of turn two. Dave lucked out on his first three cards, and wasn't able to achieve any of them. So what with my Thunderfire Cannon scattering onto a Rhino and taking its final hull point (First Blood) I had a seven point lead before Dave had started scoring. Also, my start to turn two wasn't hampered as all bar one of my reserves came on.

Unfortunately, the chaos reserve rolls failed to bring on the Hellbrute formation in turn two, but the Helldrakes did appear, and although Space Marines know no fear, they knew what pain was going to be brought.

Early on the two warlords came together in a challenge. The Daemon Prince was armed with the
Black Mace, but in two of the combat phases Dave managed to roll a 1 and paid the price with wounds. In at least two other phases the Prince was concussed by the Thunder Hammer owned by the Chapter Master. The result - one dead Daemon and a further victory point for the Iron Hands.

By this time the Helldrakes were destroying Iron Hand units just for fun; combat squaded tactical marines, scouts and Land Speeder Storms were melting away under the Baleflamer template.

My Iron Hands are my goto 40K army when having a pick-up game. (Yes I know, they are painted yellow. The actual Iron Hands colours are black and silver, which I thought was boring. So yellow they became. A successor chapter if you wish). I really enjoy their stamina (6+ Feel no Pain and It Will Not Die). I do take a perverse pleasure in seeing an opponent think he has killed a model, for me to say 'Hold your horses sunny Jim' and then roll a 6 on a D6 - priceless. I also feel that with so many of the maelstrom cards requiring you to be next to an objective, having a highly mobile (Rhinos, bikes and Land Speeder Storms) and objective secured units, gives you every opportunity to keep the points score clicking along each turn.

I do have to accept that the tooled-up Chapter Master is a big points sink. He must get into close combat, for me to have any chance of winning the game. Although I lost my previous maelstrom game against Dave (he fielded his Inquisition and Imperial Knight army) the Chapter Master did bring down the Knight, so I was able to take that rather large crumb of comfort as consulation.

I have wargamed for a fair few years now, and much as a long standing Space Marine Chapter, I have been able to build up some traditions based on my wealth of experience and superstitions (a wealth of experience which I hasten to add has yet to turn me into a very good tactically minded wargamer).

Wargame Superstition One - New Model Syndrome - If you use a new model for the first time it will do badly. This is of course multiplied if you use a new army for the first time. However, there is a condition to this rule which was illustrated in our game, if your are using new models, they won't do as bad if your opponent is using new models which are not fully painted. Example in point, my new Terminators were freshly painted and did get onto the board, and destroyed a chaos cultist unit (yea baby, worth every point!), but Dave's partially painted Deamon Prince had a mare and the Hellbrute Formation did not get on the table at all!

The Chaos Gods had still not finished having their fun as the leader of one of Dave's Space Marine units successfully killed the Scout Biker's Sergeant and, you guessed it, swiftly changed, and Dave's Daemon Prince returned to the table, rather quicker than the usual one thousand years and not in possession of the Black Mace. I guess the Chaos Gods felt that he deserved a second chance. Ahh, isn't that sweet of them.

So, in conclusion, by the end of turn three, and the end of our game, I was 11 points to 3 up (I had also scored all three secondary objectives). Ok, so I accept not a proper victory, but an enjoyable game none the less.

Oh, and by the way, I promised myself not to use the word fickle when describing how the Chaos Gods had behaved during the game - promise fulfilled. Happy Wargaming.