Tallarn Rough Rider fixing WIP

I bought these guys years ago on eBay. It shipped from China.... didn't realize it at the time, so I have a strong suspicion that I inadvertently bought fakes. That said, the molds are good, and didn't require too much fixing.

The big place these guys did need was their lances. Plastic lances are just bent and look like crap. I had a bunch of brass rod lying around for pinning figs, but it looked perfect to replace the lances. With some micro drills in hand, I fixed 2 of the lances on these guys. Only 1 of them needed the front of the lance fixed. The other guy required BOTH parts in front and behind his hand repaired. Resin is a double edges sword. GREAT detail... but also thing parts flex and bend. Then again, it's also easy to cut with a hobby knife, and you can always do the hot water bath to fix bent stuff..

Sarg is in the middle. He didn't need any brass but I did have to cut off some of the flash. 4 to go..

Battlemat Deepdive & Madness

Something that I don't tend to focus on in wargaming is the terrain, and more specifically the surface of the board, so I wanted to share a bit of the collection that I've been working on of battle mats, but also terrain "flats" since I don't have much room for buildings, trees, etc. like I used to back in my parent's basement back in the day. The flats will be another post.

Many games require different sized boards, 2x2', 3x3', 4x4', 4x6' seems pretty standard. There are those historical Napoleonic guys who have 5x8' tables, but that's just not very common anymore. It's also WAY easier to lean across a 4x6' table and not spear yourself on the metal points of your pikemen, knock over trees, or shift a figure/unit by mistake.

But either way, what we used to do "back in the day" was to get a thin green thin fabric sheet from a place like Michael's, lay it down, with some books underneath it for hills, stick some trees, buildings, fences etc. on it, and get to playing. Whenever I make it to my parent's house for XMas days with BigWillie and/or Goulio, that's STILL what we do, because all my old terrain and that green sheet is still there.

I also play the ancient's game DBA, which uses a 2x2 or sometimes 3x3 board, and I bought a few boards for this game:

Tallarn Desert Raiders Flamer Conversions WIP

 I love my Tallarn Desert Raiders Imperial Guard Army. I will never sell it.

BUT, when GW made these guys, they decided to NOT include flamers or heavy flamers as part of the weapon loadouts.

After many ebay purchases, I have obtained quite a number of Tallarn Desert Raiders. The main box came with a Melta guy, so I have plenty of those. I also have only 2 Plasma guns, a single Grenade Launcher, and assorted heavy weapons.

BUT no flamers! Thus with all my spare time with COVID, I decided to change this with a little ingenuity. I shall explain my process below the pics. I present; 3 flamers & a heavy flamer WIP. I was encouraged by original Ogryn Conversions (here and here but they've since been rebased) and am getting more comfortable with green stuff in general.

Process Regular Flamers:

1. Purchased several flamers + 1 heavy flamer Imperial Guard bitz, including Gas Tank backpacks from ebay (pretty cheap).
2. Took 3 existing melta guns that I had purchased (the red paint job is old), and sawed off the Melta bit.
3. Also had to grind their backs a little bit to remove the head covering ends etc. to make way for the gas tank(s). Not too much is needed if you're cool with a "slouched" diagonal look to the gas tanks.
4. Took 2 flamer gas tanks, and cut them in half, carving them down so that they looked like a single tank backpack. This is to help differentiate the heavy flamer from the regular flamers on the tabletop from a distance.
5. Cut off the flamer "flame" bits from the original flamer arms and glued them onto the end of the cut down melta guns. Now the melta guns looks like flamers
6. Took 1.5mm jeweler's wire which is very flexible, and cut it down to the right length
7. Drilled shallow, roughly 1.5mm holes in the end of the gas tank as well as the bottom of the melta gun. I found the part where the other piping goes in looks logical.
8. Glued the wire into the gas tank and the melta gun
9. Hey Presto! Instant Tallarn Flamer dude

Process Heavy Flamer:

1. This guy was neat because he's actually an older missile launcher guy who was missing his missile launcher arm. I had nothing for him to do...
2. Had to grind down his shoulder a little bit and bend his holding arm, but eventually got it to a good place where it looks like he's holding the Heavy Flamer with both hands. But it's a great look
3. Grind his back a bit to accommodate the flamer tanks.
4. Glue the double gas tanks onto his back. I keep the double tanks since he's "heavy" so will need more gas, and at a distance I'll be able to easy tell he's the heavy. I'm not a HUGE fan of the heavy flamer weapon model, but that's ok. I think it would look better if it were more horizontal instead of vertical.
5. The piping almost fit, but needed a bit of hot bending, and I broke it a bit so will have to fill in with Green Stuff eventually
6. Also, since he's supposed to be holding a missile launcher against his head, I'll need to Green Stuff the side of his head to fill it out a bit. Otherwise it looks a bit flat.
7. Hey Presto! Instant Heavy Tallern Heavy Flamer dude.

Even if I don't use them in 40k which I don't really play, I could play One Page Rules Sci Fi or Kill Team.  These guys will be a great addition. I'll update once I've got the Green Stuff in place, and might have undercoated 'em.

Khador Battlebox magnetized

 Being locked down here in California, I've been distracting myself with thinking about wargaming, modeling, and collecting.

I can't paint (my daughter is still young enough that she wants to fiddle with whatever Daddy's doing), but I can occasionally do some greenstuff, and modifications. The next few posts are just what I've been up to.

First up is my magnetization of my Khador Warjacks. I needed an opponent for my Menoth. Originally I'd have gone with Crucible, but those figures seem to be unavailable. Khador however, my next favorite has plenty on eBay, MiniatureMarket.com etc. So Khador it is!

Mk3 of Warmachine uses "Themes" heavily. I really like forces with lots of 'jacks, so the obvious choice in Khador is the Theme "Jaws of the Wolf", which is the 'jack heavy theme.

To that end, I bought the Khador battle box, which has Kozlov1, a good beginner caster, a Juggernaut, and a Decimator; two heavies which are easy to play.

Ever since I magnetized my Menoth Crusader YEARS ago, I thought it would be a good idea to magnetize these guys, so I bought a box of Khador Heavy Jack Kit, which comes with plenty of options. I also bought the Kodiak Kit because it looks amazing, and magnetized EVERYBODY. 

Behold!

With this group of lads, I can make 2xJuggernauts, 2xDecimators, a Marauder, and/or a Destroyer. Add to that a Kodiak or a Grolar. So lots of choice! And a good setup for some Battlebox battles or even 15 pts.

X-Wing Report - Epic Battle

Here is a battle report/review of my first game of epic. Generally speaking I think that epic is now my preferred format for X-Wing. It feels much more interesting, both tactically and thematically The only advantage the competitive format has is that it takes less time to play. While moving the ships has been made very quick, thanks to the wing tool, there are a lot more dice rolls and squadron/card management (not so bad really). In this report I had to proxy some ship cards (interceptors) and ships (TIE bomber for a gunboat). The battle report is 500 points a side straight up fight, no mission. In this battle the Empire have found a rebel resupply location and jumped-in to intercept them. The C-ROC is on the side of the rebels. The board was about 4 feet by 5 feet.

 

The Empire deployed with the intent of jousting the C-ROC. The rebels deployed as a group except the X-Wing squadron on their flank, their primary target was either going to be the decimator or imperial cruiser (the decimator was the most points). Interestingly with the CROC set up along its friendly edge banking one right makes it fish tail off the board (we didn't remove it and let it dangle for a turn).

Turn 1. The rebels move slowly forward with the Empire sending the interceptors after the X-Wings and the squadron of gunboats quickly slamming up the other flank.

Turn 2. The interceptors (they moved before the X-Wings) continued to advance too quickly. At the end of the movement phase they were stressed and at range three of the X-Wings, which resulted in three proton torpedoes into their their leader Soontir, who was saved because of his veteran wing leader ability. That ability probably saved all of the aces on both sides, but also revealed a huge opportunities for concussion missiles (in epic concussion missiles might be better than proton torpedoes). On the other flank the imperial gunboats slammed though the asteroid field showing great manoeuvrability. The wing rules allow the wing-men to effectively fly over obstacles with no effect. Sadly, they also out-paced their support ships leaving them to face the first shots from the C-ROC alone. The CROC build allows 4 shots at range three with only spending one energy and one calculate... seems very good for the 115 points.

Turn 3. After their initial joust both the X-Wings and interceptors flew past each other to engage their intended targets. The X-Wing would be out of range but the interceptors managed to target the Arc killing it by turn 4. The rest of the ships smashed away at each other with the imperial cruiser taking a huge beating, and unable to return much fire, I messed up with my manoeuvre and was still not close enough for the point defense battery My intent was to use the title to add free “eye” results and then convert them to hits with calculates and focus. This didn't work because once the cruiser started taking damage its green tokens were routinely stripped away.

Turn 4. Was the heart of the fur ball with all ships getting into range with each other. The gunboats had totally missed their approach on the CROC and that cruiser only took minimal damage. The same could not be said for the imperial cruiser who was badly damaged by the collective bombardment of the rebels, notably the remaining proton torpedoes on the X-Wings.

Turn 5. Interestingly the fur-ball thinned out pretty quick and did not become a parking lot. One interceptor was run over by the CROC but wasn't destroyed and the Imperial Cruiser was finished off before it had a chance to fire that turn.

Turn 6. was played but not much happened and the Imperials conceded to the rebels. I didn't have a watch but the game took probably two hours once set up was complete.

Conclusion. I think the Imperial plan was executed poorly. Both of its wings that it was going to flank with missed their lines or misjudged their ranges. Played again I think it could easily have gone the other way. Veteran wing leader is the upgrade with the best value for cost. But the most fun part about epic is commanding the huge ships. The huge ships play very differently from little fighters, as you would expect. Managing their systems seems thematically correct and adds a whole new layer to the game. However, it does seem the most powerful element is the wing. I suspect multiple 3 ship wings led by aces with veteran leader and swarm tactics will prove to be the optimal build.