Paying The Toll

Tonight was the fourth game in the Warkromunda campaign, and the first of the second half. My Wyld Kats once again played N's Orlocks, the Cold Steel, again, looking for revenge. I didn't get a victory, but I did kill one of his jetpack juves, so that'll do.

We played Settlement Raid, with me challenging for his Toll Crossing. Initially I had a pretty solid plan - to use the terrain to scoot down the flank, avoid his heavy bolter, and pick off his fighters in small batches. It quite rapidly unravelled, though...

Table layout, view from my side. All the terrain is N's, it's TT Combat stuff I think. Really nice stuff.

End Turn 1 - no casualties as yet, just some pinning and manouevering. I took a risk and brought my first batch of reserves, the Juves Wildsnake Bliss and Li'l Septem, on in position to jump Doug Jr at the start of the next turn...

End Turn 2 - unfortunately N got priority (this would happen in all but one turn) and immediately threw a demo charge at the poor juves, putting Wildsnake down with a Serious Injury and pinning Li'l Septem. Meanwhile Machine Gun Sally lit up my ranged Gangers and took Tia Venom out with a hail of bolt shells. Over to the left, my Queen, Matriarch, and both Death Maidens continued advancing to threaten the Orlock flank.

End Turn 4 - Turn 3 was so hectic I forgot to take a photo! Incendiary charges turned my flanking attack with my reserves into a mess of burning and injured Escher, while my attempt to use Jezebel Mourning to take out N's reserves who'd come on behind my flank attackers fell flat when I rolled a 1 to wound with a plasma pistol. She was then just straight up deleted with SIX injury dice following a burst of combat shotgun fire! To add insult to injury, Losse de Grey charged in to attack the juve that'd thrown the incendiary charge and rolled four 1s out of five dice. She only needed 2s! I did at least do in Doug Jr with Vikki Vicious though. Machine Gun Sally took out Sinnamon Kane, ending my feeble base of fire over on the right. But I passed all my bottle tests.

End Turn 5 - things have gone from bad to worse. While I've managed to finally get Losse de Grey into combat, Penny Diamond got heavy bolter shells for her trouble, while all my Juves were now either Out of Action or Seriously Injured. On the plus side, the mere threat of my Death Maiden and chem-thrower did mean N's leader continued to run away like he'd been doing ever since his plasma pistol ran out of ammo...

Game End - six of my gang were out of action, two of the remaining four were on fire, and only Losse de Grey was still really in fighting condition. I did however manage to put Jazz Out of Action at the very last with a needle pistol shot from Losse de Grey, so that was a nice little morale boost! And it was a Memorable Death result, so she got a bonus pip of XP too!

What was left of my gang - that damn hand flamer on Hot Pete was a real nuisance!

In the post-battle phase I managed to roll some very jammy results on the Injury Chart, with only one serious injury - Enfeebled, on Sinnamon Kane. Everyone else was either Out Cold or otherwise unaffected. I also made a fair chunk of change, which I then immediately spent on some Mesh Armour and a Phelynx for my Wild Runner to pal around with. I should probably have spent the Phelynx creds on more Mesh Armour, but - meh. That's not as cool! Or cute. At least now my three most valuable members have an armour save. Who knows, it might even help them a bit...

Wrong End Of The Kill Zone

Tonight my Wyld Kats took on the Van Saar of the Carbon Copies and got absolutely wrecked - the combination of plasma guns and a highly mobile hand flamer with my own inability to sit tight in a nice close confines and force them to come to me meant that the third and final game in the first half of this campaign did not go my way at all, and the Narco Den ended up with the Carbon Copies!

Deployment - I was hoping to try and use Tia Venom and Faye Starr to cover the kill zone with close combat backup from Penny Diamond, while Fancy, Vikki, and Ripperjack waited in the close corridors to jump anyone who came after them

End Round 1: Tia Venom went out of action to the very first shot of the game from the Carbon Copies' boss Axel and his plasma gun, while Faye Starr was pinned by plasma fire from the champion Bella's own plasma gun. Penny joined Fancy, Vikki, and Ripperjack out of line of sight!

End Round 2: Ouch! In an attempt to try and get some flanking pistol shots both Fancy and Ripperjack got shot down - Fancy having managed to pin the Ambot with a max power plasma shot that both failed to wound and caused her to run out of ammo, she was then send out of action by Bella. Ripperjack, stood just to the side of the gap in the right wall, got flamed by Gina the neotek.

End Round 3: Having decided not to face off against the Van Saar, Faye Starr legged it through the door to try and catch up with the others. Unfortunately Gina the neotek swung round on her hoverboard and set both Vikki Vicious and Penny Diamond on fire!

End Round 4: The ambot coup de gras'd Vikki Vicious, who had been left with a serious injury, and then Faye managed to wound it with her stub gun (atta girl)! Penny Diamond put the fire out and then moved into cover.

End Round 5, end game: Penny managed to charge and take out the ambot, then, with a judicious use of the tactics card Chain Attack, got into combat with Gina and took her out of action too - before being shot to bits, of course. Then the remainder of the Carbon Copies lined up to take turns shooting at Faye until she succumbed. At this point, with my two remaining gang members seriously injured, I conceded.

In the aftermath it turned out both Vikki Vicious and Ripperjack Knox were critically injured... and I could only afford to treat one at the doc. So Vikki lived, and Ripperjack died of her burns. Worse, neither of my Settlements produced any Juves or Gangers, and I rolled well below average for their income again. On the plus side, it turned out that Penny had savagely dismantled the ambot with her power sword, destroying it - Gina on the other hand survived... next time I'll get her!

So now we lick our wounds and prepare for the second phase of the campaign. The Wyld Kats might be down, but we're not out!

And there were a lot of other games at the club, too:

40K - Marines vs Necrons

Extra tiny WW2

Two games of Bolt Action (on the right, Finns vs Poles, on the left Germans vs British I think)

Beautifully painted SAGA

More 40K - Chaos Knights vs Imperial Guard

More 40K - Dark Angels vs Genestealer Cults

More (!) 40K - Tau vs Tyranids

More (!!) 40K - Dark Angels vs very lovely Imperial Guard, I think Death Korps

Age of Sigmar: Spearhead

Kill Team (3rd edition)

Kill Team (3rd Edition)

Even MORE 40K - Eldar vs Chaos Marines

And finally there was...

The Old World - Grudge match! High Elves vs Dwarfs

The more I see of 10th Edition 40K the less I like it. I think I'll stick to 4th Edition and be happy about it honestly.

Anyway, there you go, a nice little Battle Report and some photos of games in progress at Warwickshire Gamers to start the week.

Licking Our Wounds

The Wyld Kats got their second outing tonight in the local club's campaign, against N's Cold Steel Orlocks. Unlike last time, they got thoroughly demolished - mostly because I couldn't seem to roll above a two, and N was rolling hot the whole time. I ended up with five fighters Out Of Action, of whom one died! So at some point the Wyld Kats are going to come gunning for Cold Steel... 

It started off with a lot of jockeying for position, with me moving the bulk of my gang aggressively towards the enemy relic

And the Orlocks responding by taking cover and moving around me, so we ended up fighting left-to-right instead of front-to-back (in this photo you can see the Orlock relic, a pile of tyres!)

 

Initial reinforcements were OK, I managed to get my gangers in a position to defend my own relic (seen here just in front of Vikki Vicious and Tia Venom)

But then it all went wrong! A couple of turns of excellent dice rolls from N and terrible ones from me took Fancy Fliss, Sinnamon Kane and Wildsnake Bliss Out Of Action, and I tried to turn the tide by playing Hive Tremors...

...only for my high Initiative Escher to completely fuck it up and almost everyone became pinned, while only the Orlock Captain and Champion fell over. Bugger!

Last gasp attempt to claw something back and my Matriarch fires her plasma pistol at Hot Pete. I needed 2+... and rolled a 1. Shortly thereafter Hot Pete set Roxy Danger on fire, taking her Out Of Action. I voluntarily bottled and fled the scene

But too late for Roxy! I tried taking her to the Doc, but the Doc wanted 120 creds (about the only time I rolled sixes all game) and I couldn't afford it, so she died in the streets of her injuries!

The end result was no new Juves or Gangers from my two settlements, one death, two head injuries (Losse de Grey and Sinnamon Kane), an Old Battle Wound on Fancy, and wounded gang pride. 

Frankly, I buggered up the initial exchange by losing Losse de Grey for a single Orlock ganger - they squared off in the centre of the board, the Orlock managed to disengage and Losse rolled a 1 to try to reaction attack - again, all she needed was a 2 or more - and then I foolishly chased him down, leaving her in the open in front of three Orlocks who promptly shot her to bits then delivered a coup de gras. I should have moved her into cover and shot the ganger, and waited for backup. Then, later, when I had a bit of a chance to try and do something by charging Wyldsnake Bliss into Rudy Judy, an Orlock wrecker, I rolled two 1s and a 2 with three attacks followed by Rudy dealing a serious injury and then a coup de gras. That forced me to use Penny Diamond to take Rudy out, rather than going for Hot Pete... which then left Hot Pete alive and able to hand flamer Penny and Fancy. 

Still, when the dice are against you there's not a great deal you can do. My general plan was sound - use the bulk of my gang, particularly my Leader and Champions, to press towards the enemy relic and defend my own with my reserves. Unfortunately it was not to be, this time. But the Wyld Kats will be back - and angrier than ever!

In other news, I popped into Wayland's Forge today for a rummage and walked out with some Skaven Jezzail teams and a Death Cult Assassin:

The jezzail teams are from the new Age of Sigmar box, but they look absolutely fantastic on proper 6th Edition style bases, and will go nicely into my 6th Edition Skaven army. Which I should probably look at again, I'm pretty sure it's a bit more than 2,000 points now. Might add some Plague Monks at some point. And a Screaming Bell. And a Warp Lightning Cannon... and I should probably paint some of them too honestly.

The Death Cult Assassin is a Copplestone Castings miniature - WH1, Girl Werewolf Hunter - which I got to complement (and complete) the two Hasslefree Miniatures versions of the same character... Selene, from the Underworld film series.

I also took some photos of the various games being played at the club tonight:

Kill Team!

Lord of the Rings!

Super small scale (2mm?) WW2!

Warcry!

Mordheim (my beloved)!

A couple of games of SAGA!

The Old World!

A close up of this beautifully grotesque Nurgle demon engine

And that's that for today - no painting, but a little bit of building of Skaven, and a game of Necromunda, so a pretty productive day in the life of a wargamer. Next week is the club's AGM so I won't be getting any more Necromunda in until the 14th of October probably. Now I just have to work out if I want to spend any of my 150 creds on some new gang members...

So Many Feet

 Today I have mostly been painting Night Goblins. 42 of them, to be precise, with a Shaman and a Battle Standard Bearer sitting waiting their turn (although really I don't need to paint these as I already have several Shamen and a BSB completed). This meant I needed to paint 84 shoes, 41 weapons, 38 shield rims, and now I'm working through the highlights on the shield designs so that's... oh I don't know how many passes of yellow on the shields.

Anyway, while doing this I have mostly been listening to this really quite excellent little series of videoed Battletech: Alpha Strike battle reports that Wargamer Stories over on the You of Tubes have. My best friend CH put me onto them today and they're really good - a series of linked battles as part of a proper old school map campaign, charting the war for a planet called Blue Hole, between the Alyina Mercantile League and the Vesper Marches' House Kerbyn. 

They've really got me itching to do some more 'mechs, but my main problem there is that the Mercenaries Kickstarter I backed is months away from arriving (damn space travel) and all my existing mechs are painted up anyway. So I guess I'll have to crack on with these cackling green loons, and try to get them done this weekend - if my sanity holds up after painting umpty jillion goblin teeth.

Oh, and so I don't post something without a photo, here's some photos from the Alpha Strike game CH and I played the other week at his parents' house. I took a Star of 'mechs from the Jade Falcon unit Falcon Guards, of the Gamma Galaxy, and CH brought a reinforced lance of his mercs, standing in for the Davion Brigade of Guards.

Deployment - Falcon Guard Alpha Trinary Command Star ambushed by Davion Guards reinforced lance

Initial moves to contact: the Davion Annihilator on the right really struggled to get to the fight.

After the Davion MadCat destroyed the Nova, it became a scrappy knife fight...

...so I pulled back to allow my superior ranged firepower to do its work.

CH's MadCat and my Timber Wolf blew each other to scrap at point blank range while my Turkina and Kingfisher dealt with the Annihilator.

When the dust settled only the Davion Archer remained standing, and CH withdrew having destroyed my Timber Wolf and Nova for the loss of his Blackjack, MadCat, Annihilator and Jagermech.

And, because I'm a fan of the stories that wargames and campaigns generate, that night I wrote a short story - just a thousand words - about the immediate aftermath from the perspective of the Jade Falcon clanners. You can find it here, at Archive Of Our Own.

No painting points today as I haven't finished anything. See you all tomorrow with some more progress (or even photos of the finished gobbos)!