Dux Britanniarum 30/8 AAR: Saxons vs Romano British

And there we have it, I finally got to play DB in order to be more or less boot-camped for the TSA campaign.

Going over to my mate Glenn (who is also my "lord" in the campaign) to see the rules in action, I took command of a Saxon force that would try and raid a village and withdraw from the premises before the British arrived.

My pre-battle movement made it so that I had a line at the edge of the village to face off the defenders, while my missile troops and one unit of levy went to the houses to try and grab the loot.

They both quickly battered down the doors, in order to be able to search the places.

In the meantime, the first casualty of the battle falls as one of my elites is shot down by the british archers.

I wanted to try the combat sequence asap, and as such tossed a lord and his levy unit against the heaviest hitters of the british: a unit of elites with their Lord and Champion.  This mostly served to know and feel how combat worked before I would commit my main battleline.

The Levy are wiped out, and the nobleman surrenders, only to be executed on the spot by the british lord.

And down went the saxon morale...

My main line now crashed with two units of warriors with a noble, facing off my elites with lord and champion, as well as another unit of warriors. 

One of the warriors units is forced back, but the other ones hold on for dear life, blocking my advance through his line for now.

That second unit is finally wiped out, but my main combat line is reduced far below it's fighting ability as a result.

On the other side, the second block of troops faces off a larger force of levy, so it`s hoping that the warriors I have in that fight will make the difference.

In the meantime, my scavengers found the loot and started moving to the table edge, but I was down on one morale point left.  Could my line hold and secure the loot, allowing me to grab at least a draw as a result?

Unfortunatly not.  As a unit of levy break due to excessive shock, I flunk the morale modifier roll with a 6 and drop to 0, causing the points to be tallied.

The end result was a crushing 8 - 2 victory for Glenn, and I admit I rarely had the chance for grabbing the win.  Had the unit held and the loot being carried off, a draw might have been possible, but the last turn of combat was a disaster and reduced my fighting force to some straggling survivors, while yielding some good points to my opponent.

But it was fun to finally put the theory of the rulebooks into practice, and I learned some good lessons, and observed some points I`m surely going to play on in my game as a result.

What I painted in August 2017

Another month passed by and that means it's time to tally up the things I`ve been painting during august 2017.

While not quite as much as I liked, due to holidays and some big real life doo-doo, I still managed to churn out a reasonable 20 figures for Future War Commander and 11 "heroics".

For the 6mm forces, these have been mainly for the Emperor's Children force I`m building and expanding on, but apart from that also my small detachment of Night Lords to go with the army.  Not that it matters one bit ruleswise, but it just looked cool to have some variation in the force, considering I`m going to do small sections for those armies (like, a single detachment) over time.

For Age of Sigmar, I pressed ganged myself to paint up the old Morathi figure, the version on foot.  This was due to the fact she needed to be on the table half of august to serve as a proxy for a Death Hag, and I succeeded in that just fine.

The final thing I finished as late as yesterday, where a squad of Chaos Space Marines, including heavy bolter and plasmagun, to form one of the core units of my force as such.

Not to bad in the end, but I hope to get my 500 points 40k Emperor's Children both painted and on the table during september.

That`s the target at least...

Chaos Space Marines second part

The varnish has dried (glossy of course, they need to shine on the battlefield figuratively AND literally) on the second part of my Space Marine squad.

Continuing in the hefty pink and black colour scheme of the Emperor's Children, these Slaaneshi marines are already salivating at the thought of causing mayhem on the board.

It also adds a bit of the long range punch to the squad, as they hoist around the heavy bolter from the squad.

The rest is armed with the trusty boltgun to lay down a hail of bullets on all that stand against them.

And the full, "unified" squad in all it's delirious glory!

These guys add another 4 points to the goal of reaching 50 "power level" for my force by the end of the year, and will be making the solid base of the first 500 points games I hope to be playing soon, only some cultists to start and the champion to lead them who is now about halfway through...

For the Emperor!

Voltron Legendary Defender season 2

The series that started Netflix's "assault" on the animated market, it is a true rendition of a very classic cartoon I grew up with.

While season 3 has been released in the meantime and season 4 in the pipeline, one can say I ain`t the only one having this nostalgia feeling.

In the second season, the war against the former Black lion paladin, and evil overlord, Zarkon continues.  The team has to find allies if they ever want to stand a chance of defeating him, and in their quest they also learn to work together more.  And as such unlock stronger powers on their lion and discover their inner selves some more.

Of course, there are the necessary sidestories and comical filler reliefs usually based around Hunk and / or Lance, but it was a most spectacular season and with an epic two parter finale.  In the end, they overcome the odds, but Shiro goes AWOL and we get to hear the namesdropping of their next enemy now that Zarkon has been defeated once and for all.

Gorgeously drawn and animated, and the "Form Voltron" sequence remains a truly cool piece of watching, without getting boring even though it is repeated at a ratio of about 1 in 2 episodes.  because, well, that`s what the whole series is about, a mighty robot made up out of 5 legendary lions after all...

And it was also the 10th anime series I`ve seen this year, so that can go of the 2017 objective list now as well...

Transformers Tiny Turbo Changers blindbag opening

With the Last Knight came a series of blindbags for the Transformers line, and I found some of them in the Intertoys in Geldrop.

Now, I don`t want to just grab at random and end with a couple of doubles, nor do I want to collect the whole series.

So a quick search gave me the bumpcodes for the wave, to be found HERE.  These codes are located at the back (sorry, the picture doesn`t really show them), but slightly to the left above the Hasbro logo, there is a number imprinted on the bags.  About a centimeter further left of this code is a single letter, and that is the model that is in the bag.

So that would mean I picked out the Grimlock (I always loved the Dinobots) and Crosshairs, because, well, my criteria of buying a Transformer is that he is
a) an Autobot
b) usually transforms into a cool car

This is a general rule of thumb, as as a kid I liked for example Superion far over Defensor, though in the new series I bought neither.

Turbo Changers are small 2 - 3 step transforming, rather softish plastic models of about 4 cms in height, and come only with the most basest of paint jobs on them.  Perhaps their biggest attraction is their sort of Chibi style robot forms, like those mono-pose bags that where on sale here about a year ago and just contained small, non transforming, G1 lookalike characters.

The first bag contained indeed Grimlock, in a beige colourstyle compared to the more traditional grey and golds.  The dino looks actually quite nice bar perhaps the "blocky" part of his feet hanging under the T-rex'es maw.

Transforming him is simple, turn around the hindlegs and split the head open, and he is all done, but he looks fine for such a small little fellow.

Crosshairs, the irish sniper in the movie, is perhaps well detailed in his carmode, but it suffers from his non painted windows on this mode imho.

Again he has a simple transformation of putting back the hubcap (which becomes a big block at the backside) and pointing the arms forward, but the seen from the front, and even with the limited paintjob, he looks fine.

These are cute and small models, nothing to fancy and just nice little gimmicks in a collection if you ask me.

And they stand nicely in my toy display cabinet now, Grimlock in his dino mode, while Crosshairs is displayed as a robot.

FWC 6mm: Troops, Dreads and Observer

Got some more 6mm painting finished today as the varnish dried, and it have been some reinforcements for my 6mm Emperor's Children.

Nothing big or spectacular, it are three units of pretty "core like" troops.

The first is a stand of Marines, but this one comes with the missile launcher model, to be used as such when I should upgrade a stand of them in the game to go heavy hunting.

The second unit added are another stand of Dreadnoughts, to give some heavy troop support to my mainly for now infantry force.

The last thing was something I really needed to paint up, being the FAO in order to guide the barrages of my Whirlwinds I painted a while ago.

So that`s it, three small units to further boost my attempts of letting the galaxy burn...

Game of Thrones season 7

While numbering only 7 episodes (though 4 of them are well beyond the normal timecount), the latest season of GoT was a visual spectacle.

With only one 6 episode series to go, and apparently having deviated quite a lot from the still to be written books, it will retain in large lines the same story, but the details will undoubtetly change a lot.

Now, for all it`s visual appeal, it does feel a bit rushed at times, which you`ll notice as you see it, with whole armies going from point a to b in seconds.  And that includes a Danearys action from Dragonstone to past the Wall, basically covering the whole map of Westeros.

Now, apart from that, it has been a great and political laden story.  One by one, Cersei has been (trying to) removing the allies of Dany from the board.  But when the two armies DO meet, the Lannisters aren`t a match for the combined force of dragon, Unsullied and Dothraki, forcing Cersei back on King's Landing and strugling for survival.

Enter Jon Snow, King in the North, who comes to seek the aid of Dany and show her the danger of the Great War that is about to start.  The dead are near, and it even costs Dany a dragon (Viserion) to hold them off and escape.  And that dragon is the one that showed up on the series teasers as the Night King's mount, and the one that spectacularly breaks the Wall at Eastwatch by Sea.

Now, the final season is said to pick up right here, with the invasion of the dead, and of course there will be political consequences as well, as the long living fan theory of "R+L=J"... has turned out to be true.  Jon isn`t a bastard, he is the one and only rightfull heir to the Iron Throne.

Though I doubt I`ll be watching, they killed of my personal favorite character this season...

Just kidding, I can`t wait for it!