Mobile Frame Zero: Rapid Attack!

I started wargaming when I was three, with my Dad, on the floor of our bungalow in Scotland, with Lego ironclads and a simple ruleset - the details are lost in the mists of time, but it involved the little 1x1 round cylinders as hit markers I think. Great fun was had, and I fondly remember the Monitor he made for the game.

Fast forward some 24 years and my friend CH brought my attention to a slightly more sophisticated Lego wargame: Mobile Frame Zero: Rapid Attack.

In essence, you build your own army of between 4-8 'frames' with three 'stations' (objectives) then you go up against other players in a fast-paced game in which the objectives are the main thing and you can lose with a completely intact army.

So here's my offering - Force A, of the New Byzant Militia:

 L-R: 'Kataphrakt' class mobile combat frame, 'Varangian' Type 21 ground-effect tank, 'Hoplite' Type 13 APC. Foreground: 12 man squad carried by the Hoplite with a crew-served support weapon.

 Yellow Platoon, 'Jane's Janissaries' mercenary unit, contracted to the NBM. L: 'Hetman-C' command frame, R'Janissary-E1' recon frame. Infantryman for scale.

 Two 'Mameluk-A' mobile combat frames of the Janissaries, with an NBM infantryman for scale purposes.

The NBM infantry with their three 'stations' - a communications bunker, a civilian satellite uplink station, and a camouflaged pillbox with emplaced weapon. The flags on the right and left are those of the NBM, while the uplink station flies the flag of New Byzant itself.

Oh, I've done some painting too, but I've not got photos of those yet. So hopefully the Lego stuff will suffice for now!

Out With The Old... In With The New!

To start with, before I show you pictures of Veteran Brother Sadat, here are some links to the various eBay auctions I have going at the moment:

My 'Pantokrator's Fallen Men' Chaos Space Marine Army - £19.99 starting bid
A regiment of Wood Elf Dryads - £14.99 starting bid
A squad of Chaos Space Marines - £4.99 starting bid
A Shadowforge Dark Elf Blood Bowl team - £9.99 starting bid

Have a look. If you like them, please bid. Hopefully they'll go to a good home.

And now... painted entirely at work:

Veteran Brother Sadat, 10th Squad, Lamenters 1st (Veteran) Company. Carrying a combi-melta and wearing a mix of mk 6 and 7 powered armour suits, Sadat bears a battle honour on his right pauldron and Terminator Honours on his left. The second of five Marines for Veteran Squad Zell.

I am finding painting the checked pattern of the Lamenters' chapter badge a bit of a pain, so I went and asked my local GW manager for some advice. It was given, and it was sound, so I'm going to try it today. Put simply, it was:

Paint the pad white first
Then draw in horizontal black lines
Then draw in vertical lines following the best fit from top to bottom of pad, working from the centre outwards
Then fill in the resulting squares and touch up with white.

I'll give it a go and show you all the results. Hopefully it'll work better than my current method of painting each bloody square!

Painting Points: 1
2013 Total: 287 (197x 28mm, 2x 54mm, 10x vehicles, 2x spaceships, 3x 28mm cavalry, 2x flags)

Summary Of A Week

Well, this week I finished another Lamenter (picture tomorrow), got hold of some more black wash to do the rest of the Knights of Justice, picked up some of Games Workshop's Liquid Greenstuff to try and push on with the rescued Rhinos I got to transport the Righteous Fists in, and played some games of Elder Sign with AC.

Elder Sign is a card-based game for 1-8 players in which each player assumes the role of an Investigator trying to stop one of the Elder Gods from appearing and ending the world.

It's fiendish. Very fiendish. As a co-op game you need to work together, and against the clock, while trying hard not to go mad or die. Usually... you'll lose. But not us. Oh no. We defeated four (four!) Elder Gods in one night. In under four hours, no less!

So, some pictures of our heroic efforts:

After defeating our first Elder God of the night, we decide to press on and end the scourge of R'yleh.

 And another one bites the dust! No Investigators dead yet, either, although the previous two did head off to a well-deserved retirement (and I like think that my first character, the Doctor, who frankly had some damn good luck, made off into the night with the foxy witch he defeated shortly before we won the game).

 Three for three - but this time, we lost three brave Investigators putting Yog-Sothoth and its minions down.

 This one went right down to the wire, but some bloody jammy dice rolls on our behalf saved the day. We would have lost if either one of us had had any different dice results in our last turns. This game was notable for the timid looking author going off on an acid trip to R'yleh and defeating it, returning with three Elder Signs and an ally!

It's a great game. Fast-paced, tense, and brilliant artwork. Top hole stuff, give it a try if you can.

In other news, I've also made the first decisions in terms of getting rid of stuff. There's a Chaos Space Marine force going up on eBay tomorrow, and the Karaboudjani Kataphraktoi are going up again as well. If any of my dear readers fancy picking up a fully painted and based infantry company of some 120+ figures and/or a Slaanesh-themed renegade Space Marine army and/or a built-and-undercoated Baneblade... watch for links to the auctions. Cheap presents for Christmas, perhaps? You know you want to!

One Month Later (I'm Sure I've Said That Before)!

Yow! (As Kwazii would say.) It has been a whole month since I last posted; suffice it to say that I have not been idle despite my lack of updates.

The main event, as it were, of the communications blackout, has been a trip to Warhammer World with my old mucker Jellicoe of the NHS to fight an Apocalypse 40,000 game. I contributed about 3,000 points of my Righteous Fists, while he threw in 9,000 points of Angels Sanguine (Blood Angels by another name) and a further 12,000 points or so of Hive Fleet Scheer. All in all about 24-25,000 points on the table in the end, with a scenario written by me. As so often in these things, the first run through of the scenario threw up a glaring error: Tyranid deployment was too far (four feet) from the Marine deployment, with the depressing but inevitable result that they were forced to walk towards the enemy and were shot to pieces in the process. But when they did reach the Marines, well! There was some bloodshed then.

Lunatics of the match, however, must go to the Angels Sanguine Death Company, who killed a Heirophant bio-titan in close combat... twice!

 The Tyranids. All bar about 500-1000 points worth in the bottom left corner are Jellicoe's Hive Fleet Scheer.

Tyranid deployment. Note Heirophant!

The bio-titans lead the right flank advance supported by the Heirophant's firepower. Note the Fists dug in to the left, and the Angels Sanguine sat there looking all smug with their ridiculous firepower.

 Heirodule versus Mephiston (AKA Beatty)... there can be only one winner!

Inevitably it was Beatty. A real monster of a character.

The Death Company bring down the Heirophant for the second time...

...then the survivors go toe-to-toe with a Termagant swarm.

This is quite late in the game; the Fists' air support has arrived and is busily engaged in strafing Carnifexes. Note the total destruction of the Tyranid right flank!

 I kept deep striking tunneling creatures but their lack of shooting and my inability to close with the main force meant that, without exception, they got shot apart before they got a chance to assault. In the background you can see the high water mark of the Tyranid advance; Carnifexes to the fore!

 I swamped Beatty with Termagants in a futile attempt to kill him.

Endgame: a decisive victory for the combined Astartes force which saved the world from being exterminatused by the Inquisition. 12,000 points of Tyranids and they killed barely anything. Had we deployed 24" apart instead of 48" I am sure the story would have been different. Perhaps next time!

As well as that, I took part in another two sessions of the Dragon Age RPG that AC is running with SB and MC. We defied death (again) and defeated the monsters within the caverns, getting some loot and preparing a plan for the last stage of the adventure that we are yet to play through.

Widget the elf and Hass the mage duel with the blood mage on the steps, while Iorek the dwarf slugs it out with a demon.

After much blood is shed (most of it Iorek's), the crazy Dwarf axes the blood-mage in the face. Gloating commenced.

In terms of stuff that I've painted, well:

I made a start on the Whirlwind, finishing the gunner (how he enters and exits the bloody thing I don't know, and doing it when the tank's been hit and is, say, on fire, must be a thing of miracles).

I painted the first five of my Lamenters' Death Company, the Lost. They are simply armed, as I intend to add more exotically equipped figures later to bulk the squad size up to 11 plus a Chaplain. They will be delivered into battle via a Stormraven gunship.

(Acting) Chapter Master Florentine and his command squad - the chaps in gold helmets are the remnants of the Honour Guard, the Marines who should really make up the entirety of Florentine's command group. To bulk up the numbers he has seconded Sergeant Leon and Brother-Veteran Thoros, as well as having an Apothecary from the Chapter Apothecarion. The banner is something I'm quite proud of; it's all free-handed and while not perfect certainly does the job!

Another Lamenter. This is Veteran Brother Damaskan, one of the 14 survivors of the 1st Company. Armed with a hand flamer and a power sword, he's wearing a real mix of armour as well as honour peteruges. I love how he's turned out - he looks really brutal and uncompromising.

 These are a birthday present for my friend CH; a squad of Knights of Justice scouts. He recently came into most of a Space Marine army, so I wrote him a list and rummaged around in my various bits boxes, coming up with a squad of Scouts, a Tactical Demi-Squad to accompany his Captain, and a Devastator Squad.

Here are two of the aforementioned Devastators - they are from the 7th Devastator Squad (see right pauldron), 9th Company (hence the blue helmets). Quite proud of these guys; they're an exercise in simple paintjobs - black undercoat, block colours, black wash, apply transfers, base, done.

Phew! After all that it's time to get back to painting and sorting; my other half S has made the salient point that I really should organise my soldiery into 'Keep', 'Sell' and 'Wha...?' What I do with the stuff that falls into the 'Wha...?' category will, I think, vary. Hopefully I will get my blog updates a bit more regular from now on (HA!, say the voices off)!

Painting Points: 19
2013 Total: 286 (196x 28mm, 2x 54mm, 10x vehicles, 2x spaceships, 3x 28mm cavalry, 2x flags)