Maelzch's Mad Medley

[Angelus Mortifer]

Very, very cool boards. Interested to hear the bat-reps, especially your first game.

But...

Losing assault to Necrons...?! Really?!     

[fatolaf]

Losing assault to Necrons...?! Really?!     

If its vs Wraiths then I can believe it...

[maelzch]

Update 4: Alice and the Space Wasps go on tour
Part 2: Better Late Than Never

I'm taking the title to heart here! Finally got around to sorting a rundown of the boozy/hungover weekend that was Vanquish. If you followed the attempt at live blogging or my twitter over the weekend, this may seem familiar.

Like all good birthday and tournament weekends, this started in fine style on the beer express, with me and Jim both drinking steins of beer mid-afternoon on the train.


Once down in Bristol, the rest of the evening saw loads more drinking at a BBQ, then a metal bar, which all in all led to a hangover the next day that felt like a damp mogwai had taken up residence in my skull and that I was also about to have a "John Hurt moment" at any point.  All in all, not the best way to start my first 40k tournament!

Tournament points and Secret Missions
The tournament points for Vanquish were basically Win/Draw/Loss being worth 4/2/0, with a bonus TP available if you lost but took 750 points of casualties off of your opponent.

As well as the usual 40k missions, Vanquish also incorporated secret mission cards, with them being slightly different for each player. These were worth an additional tournament point if complete.



Game 1
The first game was spearhead deployment with the killpoints mission.  I was up against Leo Midwinter's very nimble Dark Eldar, including a converted Batman toy!


Given the state I was in at this point, my aim was mainly to make it through the game! For my secret objective, I chose the occupy a terrain piece in Leo's deployment zone, reasoning that if one of my stealer units held back and scampered on late, they might be able to hide for a while!


The game basically consisted of me running at the Dark Eldar and taking off bugs, I wasn't really thinking at all! All my stuff had been shot dead by the end of turn 5 (I think it was 5, my notes are fuzzy).

The highlight of the game had to be 'The curse of difficult terrain', with three of the sail barges getting immobilised in the building, which would have been ace, if I'd had anything alive near them to capitalise on it!

The end result was a massive loss for me, I was nowhere near the 750 points killed of Leo's and I didn't get my secret mission either.

Meanwhile, Jim managed to beat the guy who went on to win the whole event, despite taking vomit breaks throughout the game!


Game 2
This was a pitched battle deployment with the recon mission (get troops to the opponent' deployment zone).  I was up against an Eldar army on a rocky canyon board.

I kept my three stealer units in reserve (like usual) with the though that when they turn up, that's three units all in the opponent's deployment zone. For my secret mission I thought I'd try to capture an Eldar HQ.


I proceeded to run everything forwards and we had a massively bloody game. Unfortunately the gaunts and stealers got a bit over-excited and ate all of the Eldar HQ, meaning I couldn't capture them.  Alice followed her usual plan of popping up in the middle of things and sowing disarray!


When the dust had settled, there wasn't many of the crunchy Eldar left and I had three units in his deployment zone, giving me the win!


Game 3
To close out the hungover Saturday, I had a three objectives mission against necrons on a pretty crowded board. I chose the Vanquish secret mission for this game, as my opponent had no Heavy Support, so I had to eliminate his Troops, which in an objective based mission, I'd be aiming to do anyway.


I initially thought this should go quite well, especially after playing Doyley crons quite a lot down the club.  I was caught out a bit (a lot) by an item on the C'tan that made all of the terrain dangerous for me! 

With my usual restraint and finesse, I barrelled everything forwards at all three objectives, only to have the nids decide they couldn't really be arsed to fight the necrons, there's no biomass there after all!

I managed to lose the game and not get my secret objective, not a great end to the day, but a good fun game nonetheless.  This put me near the bottom of the pile at 45th from the end of Day 1.


Game 4
Day 2 started with the organisers announcing that as the spirit of the event was on fun and fluffy gaming, they'd take 2 TPs from each of the top 10 players and give 2 TPs to each of the bottom 10 players.  As I was still a little fuzzy it took a minute to twig that it was April 1st.

So, game 4 was a pitched deployment against necrons on an ork-y themed board with three buildings in the middle. The mission was to capture the table quarters. I chose to defend my deployment zone with my Elites (zoanthropes) as my secret mission, planning that they could jump into the building in my deployment zone to threaten the other two buildings if any of the necron infantry tried to hide away.


The hive tyrant and carnifex tag team scuttled around one side of the large central building whilst the rest of my army went the other way.  I threw everything that started on the board forwards, intending to use the reserve stealers to ;land grab in later turns.


One of the stealer broods clearly didn't get this plan and they rampaged onto the board at the start of turn 2, I did manage to combo charge destroyers and immortals with them though.  The stealers won the combat and both units got eaten.  Meanwhile, the big guys carried on rampaging forwards, with the fex taking everything the Necrons could throw at him for three rounds of shooting, without falling over.  He then got angry and smashed a sky-tank


Alice popped up bang on time too and started chowing down on necron troop choices in the central area. By this point things were looking grim for the crons. 


The game ended once all of the necrons were wiped out, including the pesky resurrection orb Destroyer Lord.  I also had all four table quarters and had got my secret objective, so a max 5 TPs out of this game!

The painting judging also took place during game 4, with me scoring pretty well on the soft scores (+6TPs I think).  I lost out on the extra level of detail TP as one unit of Tyranid Warriors didn't have their teeth painted, which was the first unit the judges checked. Sod's law!

Game 5
The final game of the weekend Take and Hold (the 6 inch "Thunderdome" in the centre of the board). The deployment was dawn of war and I was up against Tau.  We were playing on an Imperial barracks type board, with loads of complete buildings.  The final secret mission card that I had left was to keep my Fast Attack (Raveners) alive.

My opponent started with his Kroot boldly? In the central building, which I rampaged towards.


Deciding that I couldn't be doing with that building there for the squishy kroot and tau to hide in, Freddie did his thing, leaving me with a nice bit of area cover right next to the central point to hide the troops in!


The Tau did a good job of shooting large chunks out of the tide of bugs, but it just wasn't enough, given that they would have to move their soft 'n' squishy troops near to the objective to try winning, they really had to try clearing the nids away from it entirely first! At the start of turn five, it was still incredibly close.  The tau had hardly lost anything, but I had loads of stuff on the objective.


I ended up with the tattered remains of three troop units camping on the objective, so won.  My raveners had also spent the entire game bumbling around out on one flank and clawing at Tau tanks, so they had survived too, giving me the TP from the secret objective, Another 5TP win!

Once the final scores were all tallied, this put me at 18th place.  Which won me a prize for the biggest improvement overnight (or the sobering up prize as I've called it!).  I won a £70ish quid KR multicase bag with two hard card cases inside, perfect for my new warriors army!

I believe that Jim finished a mighty 50th after a couple of tiny cock-ups cost him two separate games!

Overall, I'd have to say this was probably the best run large event that I've been to, the scenery was fantastic and the atmosphere was great! I will 100% be along to the next one!

[Angelus Mortifer]

Sounds a lot of fun... next year maybe... 

Did you happen to get any pics of the Best Painted army?

[maelzch]

I did get a few, will throw them online in the next couple of days if I get a chance.

[Dave]

Event looks great, I love the way the bugs run forward and get mowed down in most games then in the last game they huddle in the middle and get mowed down!

[maelzch]

Update 5: So long and thanks for all the fish

Firstly, I'm going to begin with some news. As some of you may or may not be aware, I'm going to be moving back to Bristol at the end of June. I never really intended to stay in London for the long haul anyways, but there you go.  I will still no doubt be back up for occasional Waaaghs, Planet OGs and club nights, and I'll still be shambling my drunken way around a few tournaments too.

Alice and the Space Wasps
As some of you may have figured, I have got 1750 points of Tyranids painted by now (as that was needed for Vanquish), but I'm going to string the photo updates for these out for a few posts, mostly 'cause I'm lazy and it saves me having to upload loads of photos in one go!

So, for this first instalment, I give you my two units of three Tyranid Warriors. The first unit (or Brood to use the space terminology) have a pair of Boneswords converted from the monstrous creature scything talons.



The second Brood have the fancy new finecast Lashwhips and boneswords from GW. I was going to convert my own for this unit but I ran out of time before Vanquish and couldn't get hold of the bits I needed.



Lastly, here's the three objectives I painted in half an hour the morning before Vanquish. I'm not that pleased with the quality of these, I will try to go back and better-ify them at some point.



A Song of Blood and Snow
My slow burn new warriors army is starting to come together nicely now, loads of ideas for conversions floating around.  Here's another couple of models for the army. First up is a WIP of a marauder from loads of kits.


This one is a WIP of another unit filler for the army, going into the marauders, with some old models. It seems that Golgfag fights for Chaos these days!



The base is a funky piece from the Dweller in the Dark kit.


That's all for now folks!

[cunningmatt]

Excellent work as always, loving the conversion work on the Warriors.

Saddened to hear you'll be leaving us for sunny Bristol soon, must make we sure play AND finish a game sometime before you go.

[Toast]

This chaos army is going to be a treat.  Big stuff unit fillers usually look great.

I will be sorry to see you go to Bristol.  You really are the standard bearer for conversions, army projects and fun gaming!  If you get that holiday car park, I hope it makes a mint!

[maelzch]

Update 6: Frankly I find the idea of  bug that thinks offensive!
Since my last update, The Avengers movie has been released, so without spoilers, I'll just say the film is ace! Also, look up the definition of the word "quim" before you see it, all will make sense.

Alice and the Space Wasps
Proving there's no shortage of movie based quotes I can title this blog with, here's another bunch of my Tyranids.  First up is the Brain Bugs, or Zoanathropes if you prefer. One of these two have been altered to be hovering on the wire as the "excellent" finecast means the model just fell apart in the heat of Vanquish! No doubt the second will need to be altered at some point too, but I'll cross that when I come to it.


Also, here's photos of "The Tide of Crap", which incidentally would be a good band name for the band that open for Alice and the Space Wasps! There's 22 Hormagaunts in this brood for those that care, with just scything talons.  Before you ask, yes, painting the grey on the carapaces for this many little buggers that die by the shovelful does lead to slight madness!




My favourite in the unit is the leaping one, another accidental alteration. The models are only joined to the base by the tiniest piece of plastic, so when this one snapped it let me vary the unit a little.



A Song of Blood and Snow
Here's another couple of WIP shots for my new all Khorne Warriors army. First up is another unit filler for the Warriors, the wings for this guy are left over ones fro the LotR Dweller in the Dark that I'm using elsewhere in the army.  The model could also double up as a daemon prince if I ever feel mad enough to take one!



And finally is another marauder, using the old Dags of War Beorg Bearstruck, who I just happened to have in my bits box!