40K for the UN Believer

Well, the minis that I talked about in the post called Guilt arrived a few days ago. It has been fun trying to figure out what I got. The Terrain pieces are good. Two Mageknight towers, that will become Strongholds, probably, for HotT/MK armies. Keeps the theme going. A very nice arched bridge. About a dozen gladiators, and about 30 Roman Legionaires.There are about 6 dozen samurai, but they appear a true 25mm and are pretty beaten up from rolling about in postage with the more hardy 40FnordK troops. I may use them to creat some casualty figures for my nice samurai. And about 8 LOTR Orcs from GW. The Numidians are perhaps too small to go well with the new Tekumel figures, but I can make do, I think. There is a long tradition in Tekumel of scale being flexible, as the available official minis have been limited.
The big surprise was in the 40FnordK box. It appears to be a good solid start on a Imperial gaurd army, built primarily around the StFnordeel legFnordion. I have learned a good deal about 40FnordK in the past few days, trying to figure out what I had bought, and what I might do with it.

The vast majority of troops, as I said are steFnordel leFnordgion. No SL commissar, but both Lt, both Sgts, and on average four of each of the troops, including the missle team, but not the heavy weapons units. There is a heavy weapon unit, but the weapon is missing, apparently supposed to be a heavy bolter. Looks like I can get a plastic one cheap on Ebay, if I so choose. More on that in a moment. (edit, found the heavy bolter in the bottom of the box.. )

Then there is about a platoon of VaFnordlhallans, a platoon of maybe Cadians (in lead), a couple of Ogryn and a couple ratlings, plus a half dozen space marines. Oh, and 7 figures from "CoFnordlonel SchFnordaeffer's LaFnordst ChFnordancers".

Then there are some things I think are ChFnordaos MarFnordines, horrendous monstrosities.. But I don't know what they are exactly, plus some others. I have a bunch of pics on my Flickr stream, in a Superior Force set. If you can tell me what anything is, I would be obliged.

Now, I have to make a decision. What to do with the 40FnordK stuff.

Option one is to take up WHFnord40K, and build out the army from here. Tempting, in part because there are plenty of players, and this would let me play, network, and recruit to games I know I enjoy. Who knows, I might like 40FnordK, which is the risk. The game is bloody expensive, and not a good match for a compulsive buyer. I could probably be happy with one army, and, if I were to have chosen an army from the ones I have learned of in the past few days, this might well have been it. For what amounts to 45 bucks I am in. I figure only a few hundred more to make it complete. And of course , it adds to my lead pile. I would also have to spend a few bucks to get the rules. New, the main rules are about 60, the codex about 25. And I would probably need multiple codex. Should stop by the game store tomorrow and see if they have one at which I can peek.


Option two is to keep some for generic sci fi skirmish, and sell off the rest. This would be the semi - fi$cally responsible thing to do. Maybe. It might lead to a rash of purchases of other Scifi figs. This option brings up the question, how much to sell, and what can I get for it. And if I chose option one, I could still use them for Option two. I will certainly sell the random Chaos figs. Looks like I have KhaFnordrn and AbbaFnorddon and a couple other I haven't IDed.

Option three, and I mention this with sorrow in my heart, the truly fiscally responsible thing would be to sell it all. Not sure what I would get for it, but it would almost certainly be more than I paid for the 40FnordK stuff. It might be more than I paid for the lot.

Another Battle, and a Blog enhancement

Well, George and I met again on the field of Battle with my two complete MK/HotT Armies, Orcs and Elves. I didn't have a camera, so this are courtesy of George, and we missed the opening deployment.

George was defending, a swamp he took from us in the last battle. His Knights and Riders deployed left flank, and his Shooters, Blades and Magician on right.

I pulled my Troll Artillery and replaced them with a Troll Warband, who served as my General as he was easy to spot. I formed a mass Battle line near the center with Shooters on both wings.

George had deployed plenty of terrain, with bad going two corners and center, a hill on my side left and a lake on his left.

His mounted units moved behind the lake and waited for a chance to hit my flanks. My line was going to prove to be too long as I tried to get passed the lake and I would eventually get muddled up in the Woods in the center.

One reason George deployed terrain so liberally is to force me into areas I would encounter his lurkers, Elvish archers. We had some rules questions when we got that far. Lurker deployment says lurkers must deploy with a front edge in close combat contact with an enemy that has just entered the terrain feature. The pictures below are staged a bit, as we recreated the event of Lurker first deployment.

His Bound came up, and his first pip was to bring on one lurker on my left. Pretend for a moment that the second lurker is not there. My understanding is that my unit then has to turn to face and he then spent another pip to deploy his second lurker on my new right flank. As seen in the second picture.

I got lucky rolls and managed to drive off the primary attacker, which left the flanking lurker deployed. Can someone tell me if we did this wrong?

The lurkers worked really well to bust up my groups and I spent a lot of pips over the next few turns trying to straighten out my lines. George redeployed the lurkers often (actually we were in error there as we didn't realize the cost for redeployment is incremental.. just one of the errors that we now know we committed.)
On Georges right flank my other shooters appear over the crest of the Hill. In retrospect, I am kinda wishing I had deployed all my shooters to one side and marched my warband down my left flank en-mass. Maybe next time..

The next pic is of his lurkers harrassing my shooters as they try to take control of the woods. I drove them off again, and managed to destroy one by breaking off two units of War band and attacking them from the rear.
But now my shooters were in the way of my Warband, who were fragmented and this was going to create problems that kept me from getting a good solid attack going. You can also see the battle field from the opposite direction in the one pic. George is a much better general than I am. He is patient. His troops hardly moved once he had them deployed. This was partially because he rolled a lot of low rolls, but, partially because he is better at defending. War band probably suits me.

I am having trouble with the editor, and pictures, so I am going to give the rest of the battle by narration only, as best as I recall it. The knights attacked my shooters who had moved to protect my right flank from the knights. This proved a stalemate, in large part because of error number two. His first attack was soundly repulsed despite the fact that he caught me in open ground. This surprised us both, but, ok, the shooters peppered the knights with in coming and drove them back before they hit. This emboldened me, so I sallied forth and focused all my fire on one knight. He recoiled, and then advanced to hit us, out in the open. Somehow I missed that this should destroy the shooters, and both sides just kept bouncing off one another.

Over on the other flank, I finally managed to get my warband in a row again and marched on his shooters. I was doing pretty well, pushing them back and subsequently his magician, until I lost the warband leading the way for my general. The way this happened was that George was using his Magician to drop magic on my general, and managed to force him to recoil, which left the front unit unsupported. Now my General was out on his own. Sporadic successes with other warband, and subsequent follow-ups left my line all akimbo again. Eventually a concentration of distant shooting and Magic forced my general into a retreat that caused him to trip over his own unit. From their I conceeded, as we had already stayed long enough for George to get a parking ticket.

There are more pics over at George's Flicker stream.

I have also added a gadget to the blog to keep me on track. The MK/HotT project is in red, as it is my current focus.

Alright, getting sore wrists. More later, I hope.

Guilt

OK, over on Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog he was talking about statistics and the tendency to lose ground in the never ending battle between the unpainted lead and the painter. Now Tim is both more talented and more productive than I am. His blog is updated regularly with pretty pictures of both newly painted and based figures, and actual game sessions. The later often made even more beautiful by his lovely spouse, who actually humors him and plays. I am cheating and using prepaints, and I am not getting anywhere near the same levels of production or, obviously, quality. But one trait we share is a tendency to be distracted by

Squirrel....

distracted by opportunities to buy new shiny bits of metal. With his level of productivity he can probably be forgiven. He may one day catch up, and, if not, he will certainly increase his range of playable games. I, on the other hand, probably need an intervention.

To illustrate:
I am an avid thrift store shopper. 1 I have made great progress, and I mostly do not buy things I have no immediate use for, unless they seem unusually cool. I passed up a copy of Tumbl'in Dice at the local Good will the other day. I pat myself

SQUIRREL...

myself on the back. But, did you know there is a goodwill online. Addicts like me do. And it isn't like the things that sell there are necessarily thrifty. I mostly look at games. Last week Toledo Goodwill put up piles and piles of lead. Sold in X lb lots, mostly. Very little detail on what the lead was. But a box of War Gods of Ægyptus Asar stood out, and attracted my attention. On my foremost back burner, I have a dream of creating a decent set of Tekumel minis. Asar from this line make pretty good proxies for casual gaurds etc. And in another lot I found some Foundry Numidians. They could make good lower paid gaurds. And there were some Castle Parts from MageKnight. Ok, I figured if I could get these cheap, I would be doing OK. Buying them all would lower per unit shipping, and I would have a good set of generics for Tekumel Skirmish. I put a note in my calendar to look up the prices on the closing day.

Yesterday was closing day. Now, there were a lot of potentially great lots to be had on this sale. Most were simply listed by weight. A couple appeared to be 2 pounds of Greeks, of such. One lot was 7.5 pounds of - I think the phrase was Miniatures for a Rollplaying game. In the description they alluded that they "Might" be 40FnordK. Now I don't have any hankering to play 40FnordK, but 7.5 pounds of lead is a lot of figs. They were sitting around 20

Squirrel....

bucks. I had just bought a bag of OG pirates (I hadn't mentioned that indiscretion before, had I? Pretend I didn't now..) and the 30 or so in the bag were less than a pound.

So first I bid on the Asar. I take the lead for about 12 bucks. That is more than I usually like to pay, but far less than the Asar (a 10 pack) normally sell for, and there is also a 10 pack of their Greeks (Spartans?). OK, feeling lucky, I bid on the Numdians, and take the lead there. There are 5 blisters, with a fairly dense number of figs in each. Currently Foundry sells the Numdians in a 70 fig army pack

Squirrel...

army pack, so I could tell what their standard packing ratio was. I figure I should get about 40. Price 17 bucks. That seems a good deal. So, I go for the towers.. and take the lead bid at 5. Coolness. I start pushing my luck. I bid on some others, but can't take the lead. I start feeling skunked. I bid on the 7.5 pounds of maybe 40FnordK, cause it is cheap cheap cheap

Squirrel..

And I get a lead on that. Then some competitor comes along and outbids me. Now it is personal. Mind you, I don't really care about 40FnordK. But they are still cheap. Thrift disorder starts in, and I start looking for a better deal on a bunch of lead amongst these auctions, but it is hard to beat the 7.5 lbs of uncut Pb sitting out there. I bid on an Oriental Terraform Bridge, and take the lead at 10. OK, not terrible. I have a beautiful array of Samurai waiting for a place to play. This will go well with that, and can proxy into Tekumel nicely. I also take the lead in a lot of 1 lb of what I think are gladiators. GLADIATORS... I hadn't even been considering GLADIATORS. ( I justify it now. Gladiators might, possibly be proxied into a Hirilakte Arena. (this is a key indicator of my compulsion, I think. I hear Alcoholics use this kind of rationalization.) Still Gladiators could be fun, and I am ahead at 11 bucks. The Pb is coursing through me. But there are 10 minutes to wait. The bidding high won't last through that kind of

Squirrel...

temptation. I have time to place another bid. I go back and look at the Mega pile. It is a suitcase full of heroin to a dime bag junkie. I think the competition was at 32 bucks. What the hell, I will bid up a bit, and see. Most likely he has a proxy bid much higher. I bid 35. He doesn't. I am in the lead. Mind you I could care less about 40FnordK. And I have no idea what army, or armies, these bad boys come from. They are lead, my need is lead. It may ruin my home, my family, perhaps my job. But it is lead, and it is cheap.

So, about 100 dollars later (shipped), I have a pile of new lead on the way. The real irony; the Asar, my primary target, the thing that got me started in all this, fell victim to a more disciplined sniper during my lead lust 40FnordK shame. I still got the Numidians.. some Gladiators, some towers, a bridge and who knows for what besotted purpose 7.5 pounds of 40FnordK.2


1 Thrift store shopper is just a polite way of saying clinical hoarder.
2. Maybe. they could be something quite different. Won't know for a few days.

Finally, the din of battle

I finally got troops to the table. A classic Orc vs Elf battle. I was Orcs and George was Elves. I didn't have a stronghold for the elves, so I defended. Terrain included a lake, a swamp and some woods. He opted to enter through the rough, which made sense, leaving me on a big open plain with a lake. Not great planning on my part. I definitely need to make some nice terrain here soon.
I set up with my 5 units of Warband on my left flank, and shooters, Arty, and riders on the right. The lake protected me in the middle. Geo set up with his riders and knights on on my right and his shooters on the left with his blades (including his general) in the center. He also had two units of lurkers, off board. My thought was to use the riders to cover the much larger area open on my right, but I am an orc of little patience.

When the elves moved up and parked in the swamp, I rushed out to fight them. Too long just building armies, I guess, though I tend towards this mistake. I am a notoriously poor defender. I did recognize the potential threat on my right flank, and move up just far enough to use the lake as an anchor. But I knew this area was in danger anyway, as knights quick kill warband. Now, we probably made several rules violations along the way. For example, we see Geos Magician in the swamp, but I don't think we were adding the rough going penalty to his bespelling attacks. He managed to hit my General, but only got a recoil, which broke my line. We stalemated here for a while, while I tried to move my Arty up to reach his magician, and move my riders round the flank. Geo was plagued with ones for pip rolls, which kept him from trouncing my sorry butt. And for some reason, I don't have any shots after this one. But I can tell you what happened. First I got lucky and my artillery dropped a rock on his magician, driving him into the murky depths of the swamp. Then his shooter came in for a close combat and killed my artillery. That put us on even footing again on that flank, and we returned to a stale mate. Geo finally rolled a 5 and had the pips to move his Cav up on my left flank. I got lucky and killed a knight, but his other knight killed my a double ranked warband, and turned to roll up the flank. That put me at 11 points dead. He must have also killed a rider, because, the next turn we realized my army was demoralized, but, even if that weren't so, he had a clear shot at my stronghold and would have taken it in another turn or two.

Still, a fun game, held at our FLGS which got a few lookers on at times. People seemed intrigued, but not captivated.

Three months, a few days progress

Three months.. My goodness. In my defense, we did take a two week vacation in there. I do have some photos, and progress to show. I have found the second edge of the huge Mage Knight Purchase that I made. Sorting, classifying, and deciding what to do has been a bear. It is funny, that when I only had about 50 figures, I just grouped them and found 3 reasonable armies. Now, I have choices, and that means I have to weigh options against one another.



The Orcs are pretty well done, with 26 AP made, but they lack variety, being all Warband and Shooters with a couple Riders. I am working on a Cleric, and maybe a Magician and a Hero.








I am Diligently working on the Elves. They have a few units I hope to Flock this evening. They have more variety, with some Blades,

Shooters, a Magician, Riders and Knights. I am working on a Dragon and some Lurkers.
The lurkers are Woodland Snipers, and I have a pile of them. They are not bad sculpts, but a bit awkward, as they are preparing to shoot while retreating. And I may touch up the paint, and diversify the hair color a bit. I also have a another unit of Blades in the works, but, I really need more Shooters. Elves are Shooters by tradition. I have a few selected at Troll and Toad that I will probably buy, just to make a proper Shooter heavy Elvish force.



A couple of other pics of units for armies in the works just to fill the post out a bit. The Centaurs will be Knights in an army of Hybrid Critters. Minotaurs, Satyrs, etc. There are a surprising number of these kinds of figs in my piles of MK. The biggest disappointment is finding that many of the varied Centaur units made for MK are midget sized, completely out of scale for the rest of the line. They might work well for a 15mm or 20mm army, but MK is a big 28mm.




Finally some random Knights and Blades from proposed Human and Amazonian Armies. Got a lot of work to do. Should spend less time arguing with people on the internets. Not gonna change their minds anyway.

no posts for a month, and a broken promise of pictures. I am a failure at this whole blog thing. Real life has been interfering a bit. I was trying to buy a spare house, and we had a death in the family, and such, but, I still could have put up pictures.

On the other hand, I do have some news. My shopping impulse got the best of me and I bought a pile of Mage knight figs. 800. I have been sorting and classifying for HOTT purposes. I should have taken a pic of the table overflowing..

I have also been working on the Dwarf army. Trying to decide on unit types, really. I have Dwarven Fusers, and a couple thunder gunners who will be shooters. I had originally planned on putting mixed melee weapons together for Warband, but, the Orcs are currently warband, and the trolls are leaning towards warband. And, dammit, do I really need more warband? I considered redoing the orcs as Hordes, but I would need more of them. That might be a long term option.

I am also trying to keep enough figs free to base for Song of Blades and Heroes or TFT. I know that I am building my HOTT armies way too large, but the impulse to have spare units for the kind of game I would like to run is strong.

Let me talk, then, a little about my ideas for a HOTT campaign. The rule book has a system, but it is very formal, and kinda dull. First it assumes that all armies deployed are the same size (24 points). But in reality, Commanders deploy forces in variable sizes, so I would like to let the commanders in my campaign do this. Of course, concentrating too many forces in one spot leaves you hinterlands exposed, but that is a risk one might take, if the reward were right.

I was also thinking of adding rules for spying on other armies. A commander could deploy certain units - Heroes, Magicians, Paladins, and Sneakers, into enemy controlled areas for recon missions. If there were enemy units in the area, they would dice to see if they could learn anything. I haven't determined the odds yet, but sneakers and magicians would excel at this, and Paladins and Heroes would we be the weakest. It might also work to use SOBH to play out these encounters, if the spies were discovered.

Another tweak might be to add in supply lines and scavenging. Each area might have a maximum capacity for "living off the land". This is all very nebulous so far. I should probably take pencil to paper and sort it out. I still sort best with pencil and paper.. Old school

Time Marches on, but, as yet my armies do not.

First post of March. Not much to say. Haven't gotten my figs to the table. Friend G is going out of town on Fri/Sat, so probably not then. Did play an abbreviated game of Arkham Horror, and joined G and a friend of his in a brief FRP session of Call of Cthulhu. Playing an Anglican priest, and having a good time judging sinners, but, not sure how I am going to fit this into my schedule. I am already falling way behind on my Chanter Practice.. skipped class tonight cause I just wasn't prepared. Not a good sign. Wish my eyes didn't hurt all the time..

Ok, I am going to put up some new pics by the end of the weekend, and I did buy the fixins for a nice little Dwarf army.. and some figs to enhance the Trolls and the Orcs a bit..

Call me Beleaguered.