Showing posts with label Van Fysher's World. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Van Fysher's World. Show all posts

Monday, 30 June 2014

Sisters Of Battle

Following on from the Inquisitorial stuff I did yesterday, I spent much of today fiddling around with the few Sisters of Battle that I have, and doing up the one RHINO that I have for them. Had a fun few minutes converting the meltagun to fit onto the automated turret dome where the other bolter used to sit!


The pig-Latin ('High Gothic') on the driver's armoured box reads 'Fidelis et Furor', which translates - very roughly - as Faith and Fury. Quite fitting for the militant nuns of the Imperium of Humanity's quasi-Catholic gothic space church!

After that, I re-equipped my Canoness with an inferno pistol, as her bolt pistol just isn't purifying enough for the sort of sinners she'll end up fighting. You know, like tanks. Or Dreadnoughts.

Then I rebased and touched up the few Celestians that I've got. I went over to Games Workshop's website to see how much it'd cost to bulk the little force up to a skirmish group and nearly fell off my chair when I realised the figures are now averaging about £5-7 each! eBay it is then...

Speaking of eBay, even more stuff has gone up for sale now, including a Brian Nelson Orc Big 'Un Command Group, a Vampire Counts Corpse Cart, some Dark Eldar and some fully painted Valhallans. Have a shufti!

Sunday, 29 June 2014

Rebasing

One of the best things about rebasing old figures is that it makes them seem new and fresh. It's also good to see how quickly my idea of basing all my 40K figures in the desert brings them all together. I may have to do a bit of repainting here and there, but my Inqusitorial retinue really looks the part. Before they were all based in classic NW Europe style green, which is great, but something about desert basing just screams "science fiction" to me.

It's probably got something to do with Tunisia...


...can't think why.

Inquisitors:
Well, actually, an Inquisitor on the left, her Interrogator (trainee) on the right.

Soldiers:
Paradisan* Imperial Guard officer and Defence Force SNCO on the left, Inquisitorial Stormtrooper Bodyguard Detail on the right (note grenade launcher, because sometimes when engaged in close protection you need to be able to give people the high explosive good news).

Assassins:
Portia and Staria, assassins from the upper levels of Hive Tertius on Varangia. No target too well protected for this duo!

Assistants:
L-R: Qunaya Snorisdottir, Squat pilot and mechanic; Jokaero weaponsmith; Primaris Psyker of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica.
L-R: Savant; Scribe-servitor; unknown? possibly servitor.

I painted up both the servitor/mutant with the red hood and massive sword (it's bigger than the Psyker or the tall Inquisitor in black armour!) and the pink-haired abhuman pilot/scoundrel type today, while my son, T, who is five, added this terminator in camouflage to his list of painted figures:



He then used the pot of sand as a mini-sandpit for his Lego figures. And why not?

Finally, there's yet more stuff for sale on my eBay. Go here to have a look and see if there's anything you might like: fully painted Haradrim? Malus Darkblade? Codex: Dark Angels for a tenner?

* The (surprisingly named) Paradise-class world Paradiso is a matriarchical society; men are not allowed to serve in the Paradisan armed forces and are never drafted into the Paradisan Imperial Guard regiments.

Thursday, 26 June 2014

Things

So in the month since I last posted, I've been to Tunisia (hot, dry, amazing), and amicably split from S.

Both of which have pretty much killed my modelling and painting. I've still managed to get a few games in, and there's a new shop opened in Leamington Spa called BAM! Comics, which is very friendly and deserves your support.

As to what I have been up to, well...

I've played a few games of X-Wing, losing some and winning some, played Firefly: the game (and lost), won a game of Talisman, and joined a games club in Coventry with my friend JY (his uncle and two lecturers from his college attend, and he had no idea, which is pretty funny).

Oh, and I finally got some Germans to paint up as Division Azul troops to fight my Soviets. Except, as I discovered, 30 figures isn't quite enough to represent a full-strength Wehrmacht-organised infantry platoon from 1942. I need another 19 figures for that - another 10 man squad, a platoon CO, platoon sergeant, three runners (one with a sniper rifle), a sanitats, and a 5cm mortar team of three. Ah well, it's a start!

Anyway, here's some pictures:


 A game of X-Wing against JY, early on, before I lost both TIE bombers by being run over by the Dodonna's Pride (the big bloody thing on the right!), and before my Lambda managed to pop Wedge(?) with its heavy laser cannon. My interceptors are busy looking cool and dishing out the pain.

Arrrgh! The death of Iorek the Shamed, my Dragon Age pen-and-paper RPG character, to a Shade, on the road from the Lothering graveyard. Poor sod. He slaughtered his way through a graveyard full of demon-possessed skeletons, only to run up against this thing against whom his battle axe was not effective and his mighty armour useless. So he fought, and died, after realising he couldn't escape. Still, it means I get to make a new character! Happy days!

 Setting up a game of X-Wing at BAM! Comics (£2.50 an hour to use a table, not each, per table. Jolly reasonably priced and you can play anything you want; there was a game of Magic going on behind us and then that turned into Conquistador). Me with Obsidian Squadron and JY flailing about trying to write a list.

 The forces. Seven TIE/ln versus two X-Wings and two A-Wings.

 Setup. Two flights ('A' on the right, with the blank space behind O2, and 'B' on the left, O4-O7) against one. Prepare to die, Rebel scum!

 End turn one. Moving in for the kill.

 End turn two. At this point I've lost O4 to X-Wing fire, while the A-Wings' assault missiles both missed, doing (thankfully) no damage at all to my closely packed TIE swarm.

 End turn three. One A-Wing downed, a few bumps as my 'A' flight run into the X-Wings which are now neatly on the tail of 'B' flight who had run into them earlier on, trapping them into facing the wrong way... aiee!

 End turn four. Bloody asteroids! Amazingly I've only lost one other TIE but I don't like these odds of 5:3...

 End turn five. I'm facing the wrong way with everything, and his X-Wings... aren't. Curses!

 End turn six. Predictable results really. Now one-on-one with TIEs against barely damaged Rebel ships; there's no way out for the remains of Obsidian Squadron now!

 End turn seven. Another TIE's bitten the dust. Still three rebel ships. The end is nigh.

And that's that! Taken milliseconds before the surviving TIE disintegrates under a hail of cannon fire from the X-Wings. A well-flown victory for JY, helped enormously by bad positioning and terrible dice rolls from me.

 Rematch. I got my own back in a 150 point game immediately afterwards where I took two Black Squadron pilots, Vader, and three Interceptors led by Baron Fel. This is the point at which JY gave up, having had all his X-Wings destroyed for the loss of one TIE, and the Falcon about to go down under a hail of fire.

A game of Talisman with CH! He took a monk who became EEEEEEVILLLL really early on (and became massively strong, a base attack of 22!), and I ended up with a thief who snuck into the Valley of Fear and seized the Crown of Command despite nearly dying along the way. Yipes! I love this game and really must get some of the expansions. And paint the figures. Must paint the figures.

And a game of Firefly in progress with SB, NR, NV, and AC. AC won, damn his eyes, but at least I got to fly in the 'verse and I was very nearly the winner. Very nearly. I just misjudged things a teeny weeny bit and ended up having to sack Inara from my crew! Sad times!

I have done some other bits and pieces, like some work on an Eversor assassin, starting to repaint the Rhino from the Aderaband Home Defence Militia, and that sort of thing, but really since I got back from North Africa I've just been gaming.

Tuesday, 27 May 2014

Van Fysher's World

OK. I've been muttering a bit about the re-organisation and serious scaling down of my 40K projects from "ALL OF THE THINGS" to "a coherent story about the war of liberation for a single world during the Amalthean Crusade".

So, to that end, today I rummaged through my figure drawers and my army case and came up with the following (among other things):

Patrol Group Sierra-Five, Aderaband Province, Towyrran contintental landmass:

L-R: Aderaband Home Defence Militia section with their locally-built RH1N0 APC with searchlight and heavy stubber; High Mallain Yeomanry half-platoon (even further understrength!) with Chimera AIFVs; Suzerain's Lifeguard Regiment Sentinel with assault cannon.

I envisage the world as having two major continental land-masses (Adwyrran and Towyrran), with three oceans - the Northern Ocean, Southern Gulf (between the two continents) and the Vast Sea, which spans almost half the globe from Western Adwyrran to Eastern Towyrran. On this world, the Imperium of Man and the Tau Empire are engaged in a life and death struggle for control...

...while Chaos cults stir within the indentured mutant workforce's townships and camps...
...while the Tyranids scutter and devour on the far west of Adwyrran...
...while the perfidious Eldar (of all kinds) strike hither and thither, following seemingly no pattern...
...and the brutish Greenskins, drawn to war like moths to a flame (if moths were heat-proof and carried blowtorches), raid from their crash-landing in the northern mountains of Towyrran!

For me, the PDF, Arbites and Imperial Guard garrison troops (Skye's World I Light Infantry) are fighting a counter-insurgency campaign against Tau sympathisers, Ork raiders, Eldar pirates and Chaos cults in the hinterlands and rear areas, while the main force of Imperial power - the Space Marines, Guard and Sisters of Battle - bring the fight to the Tau on both Towyrran and Adwyrran.

I'm looking forwards to tying all my Imperial figures together and being able to tell stories within the overarching context of the Amalthean Crusade that I've spent years thinking about!