Battle Sisters

Another Christmas is over, and I'm back at work now, so it gives me a bit of time to update the blog ;)

I've been fairly busy these past couple of weeks working on a few Battle Sisters. I'm meeting up with some of the other UK Bootaz at Warhammer World in January for a day of gaming, and we're going to be playing 1000 point game. As it's a relatively small points size, I thought I'd get the Witch Hunters out for a spin, so I needed to get some more painted.

I've had this unit sat around primed for months now, but at least they're finished to a table top standard:

The Veteran Sister Superior's book came out pretty well:


I also got enough time to quickly paint their ride:

In the next three weeks, I've got 5 Storm Troopers to paint (and build first), and two Exorcists which may or may not happen.

Urban War Triad Kabuki

I've had these Urban War miniatures sitting in their box unpainted and unloved for over year now, so I thought I'd break these out for a forthcoming painting competition on at the club. This year, non-GW models are allowed to enter which I don't think they were last year. The Triad Kabuki figure was my favourite one in the set so I thought I'd have a go at her.





I've been trying to push myself a bit further with my painting recently, which is one of the reasons I chose this. It really wanted to be painted in bold colour, and cried out for some free hand work. I generally suck at painting both red and yellow, but I'm pleased with how they've come out. The picture makes the red look a bit shiny which it actually isn't.

The red was done with a Mechrite Red base, Devlan Mud wash then layers of Red Gore going up to Blood Red. For the yellow I started with Iyanden Dark Sun, followed by Sunburst Yellow with more and more Skull White added.

I know what I can do differently next time to improve it as the paint isn't that smooth in some areas, but overall I'm very pleased.

The base is a resin insert from Fenris Games, one of their city ruins/apocalypse ones. These are nice bases, though there's a couple that might be a bit awkward to position figures on. They're very reasonably prices though, about £4 for 10 shipped.

Freebootaz Open Tournament

I played in my first proper tournment last weekend at Maelstrom Games. There was a 1750 point singles on Saturday and a 1500 point doubles on Sunday, so I played at 1750 and helped out with the running on Sunday.

We had 34 players in the singles tournament, and there were some top flight players there including ETC team members.

Here's the list I took, using Codex: Chaos Space Marines:

Daemon Prince, Mark of Nurgle, Wings, Warptime
Daemon Prince, Mark of Nurgle, Wings, Warptime

7 Plague Marines, including a Champion with Power Fist, 2 melta guns, personal icon, rhino
7 Plague Marines, including a Champion with Power Fist, 2 melta guns, personal icon, rhino
7 Plague Marines, including a Champion with Power Fist, 2 flamers, personal icon, rhino
8 Summoned Lesser Daemons
7 Summoned Lesser Daemons

2 Obliterators
2 Obliterators
Vindicator

It's not too far from my usual list really. The problem was I was playing it....

With hindsight, I'd change the list around to drop the Vindicator and take a unit of Chosen instead. Normally I won't run without Chosen in a rhino, but I've only got 3 rhinos in my collection so I had to leave them out. The Vindicator pretty much did nothing in every game.

I had 4 good games, and everyone I played was very nice and sporting. The tournament scenarios were a little unusual, and some favoured certain armies over others.

Game 1:
The was called "Head Hunter" and was kind of like kill points but you had to kill all the squad leaders in certain sections of the FOC. I was drawn against a Space Wolves player, running Logan, rune priest, scouts, 10 Wolf Guard, 3 small Grey Hunter units and 3 packs of Long Fangs. I got stuffed. I had some pretty rotten luck, losing both Daemon Princes to deep strike problems, gifting him 5 battle points, but I also played pretty badly as well. I lost.

Game 2:
The was objective based, but your deployment was at one end of the table and the objectives were at the other. I drew Eldar, probably the last army you want to play in this mission. You could only deploy HQ and Fast Attack at the start, and since I didn't have any FA I reserved everything. This meant my Lesser Daemon were destroyed as there weren't any icon deployed when they arrived. 200 points and 2 troop choices gone. I didn't play so badly in this one, and I contested all the objectives expect the big one at the other end of the table and it was relatively close on victory points. Still a defeat though.

Game 3:
This was a loot counter mission where you had to pick them up and get them back to your deployment zone. I played one of the guys from the Claws and Fists blog, who was running a Vulkan list. He easily took the game on battle points, getting 3 loot counters to my one (I was carrying the fifth one but didn't get it back in time), but we were in about 10 victory points of each other so we were drawn on that part.

Game 4:
The pairing had been random to this point, but in the final round they were seeded, where first played second etc. Unsurprisingly, I was on the bottom table. This was mission was "Retrieve the Spy", where you had a spy hidden in your opponents army which you had to reveal by destroying the unit and get him off your table edge. I was up against a fellow UK Freeboota so I knew were going to have a laugh, and he was playing Chaos. We both revealed the spy but neither of us got him off the table edge (he just died too easily). There were also two objectives as well. I did better in this one, taking an objective and killing a load of stuff.

Overall, 3 losses and 1 win put me 25th out of 34, but I had 4 good games of 40K so you can't get better than that. My stated aim was not to finish last and I did manage that. Next time, I'll be striving to finish in the top half.